🕯The Needle and the Cross 🕯

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Why I Wrote The Needle and the Cross

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I didn’t write this poem to be brave.

I wrote it because these memories still live in my body.

Some things never stayed in my mind — they settled in my nervous system.

They live in my breath.

They live in the way my shoulders tighten when a certain smell drifts through a parking lot.

They live in the way my stomach drops when a word, a song, or a sound catches me off guard.

This poem came from the years when my body learned the wrong definition of relief.

Not because I wanted to disappear —

but because I was drowning inside myself and just wanted the noise to stop screaming so loudly.

Addiction was never about death for me.

It was about quiet.

It was about sleep.

It was about a few minutes when my mind would finally stop calling my own name like an emergency.

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This poem is not a confession.

It is a scar map.

It is what God walked into with me while I was still shaking, still bargaining, still breaking —

still believing I had ruined myself past the reach of gentleness.

I wrote it because shame taught me to be silent.

Silence kept me alone.

And being alone inside pain almost took everything.

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This poem exists because I survived —

not just addiction,

but the belief that I was no longer worthy of being loved.

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The Needle and the Cross

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The needle kissed my vein again,

a poison lust I swore I’d buried.

Steel against skin,

I let the darkness in,

searching for a rush

that only left me hollow.

I relapse, and the mirror says—

you are undone again.

Why return to the sting

that carved rivers in your arms?

Haven’t you offered enough blood

to the altar of your own undoing?

Haven’t you drowned enough nights

in a flood that always leaves you thirsty?

But the pain—

it screams louder than reason.

The ache in my bones,

the storm in my mind—

I wanted silence,

I wanted release,

and for one moment, the needle promised both.

Then God said,

“Beloved, I am the stillness you are chasing.

You pierce your skin searching for peace,

but peace is not in the vein.

It is in My hands.

Come, let Me touch the wound you hide.

Let Me wash the tracks,

let Me make new the body you’ve bruised.”

But Lord—

how can You love arms that betrayed me?

How can You touch a soul

that sold itself for a moment’s fire?

I am unclean.

I am unworthy.

God replied,

“I loved you before your first breath.

I loved you with the plunger pressed down,

with your heart pounding fear and longing.

I did not turn away.

Even then, I wept with you,

cradled you in your collapse,

waited for you in the silence after the fall.”

I don’t want to go back.

But the hunger claws me raw,

and I am so weak.

So weak.

And God said,

“My strength is perfect in your weakness.

Put down the needle.

Not tomorrow. Not after one more.

Now.

Let Me be the fire

that floods your veins,

the high that does not end.

Let My Spirit be the surge within you

until the craving bows.”

Then I choose You.

Even shaking, even bleeding—

I choose You.

Take this hunger,

make it holy.

Let my scars testify:

You live, You save, You redeem.