We passed pens like rumors
in the bathroom,
smoke curling
into secrets we never wanted to keep.
It wasn’t rebellion,
more like trying to make the day
a little softer around the edges,
like padding a fall
we already knew was coming.

In health class,
they showed us pictures
of lungs blackened with smoke
but none of that looked worse
than feeling invisible
in a hallway full of people,
like they didn’t realize I was there
until they bumped into me.

Sometimes it was pills-
they were small, neat lies in orange bottles-
sometimes weed from a pen-
it was hope disguised in THC oil-
sometimes it was alcohol-
happiness in a burning liquid.
Whatever it was,
we took it like communion
from trembling hands.

The world was heavy,
so we we floated away,
heads in the clouds as our bodies
sat through lectures and bells
and futures we couldn’t picture.
We weren’t addicts yet,
just bored and sad,
just too aware and too young to name it.

No one tells you
that laughing through a high
feels hollow when it fades.
But for a while we lived in the gray area
between reality and euphoria,
encased in buzzes and blurs.
And now I think of that kid,
high in the back of math class
and I wish I could tell her
all the things I never heard.