I knew it was wrong
but it started at
a 12th birthday party, where
the six of us lit a
stolen cigarette on the stove,
then noisily ran out the back
door in the dead of night.
We hid behind the bushes with
our ringed eyes, thick
with eyeliner that we still didn’t
know how to wear right.
We thought we’d been hurt then.
Fast forward a year,
I’m 13 and now
I smoke a pack or more a day.
I have easy access, hanging out
with an older crowd
that I’ve known forever.
It seems okay, they shelter me.
Right, they shelter me.
Buy me cigars and
I leave the cigarettes behind.
Make crude jokes and
won’t take my money for them.
But I’m a chain smoker.
Somehow I hide it from everybody, somehow I sneak them in
at night and when mom cooks dinner.
I wash the scent off of me and
bring my stained tongue to the table,
all smiles.
They never know the difference.
Now I’m 14 years old,
the laughter and jokes and
happiness around Sunday
afternoon cigarettes have faded.
It’s 11:34 on a school night,
4 minutes dipped into curfew and
I’m sitting on the neighbor
boys’ back step,
trembling as I collect myself from tonight’s attack from an older
boy who was all brittle teeth and
growl.
I gulp down that smoke,
hope my lungs rot
right then and there and
I don’t make it back to the house.
I’m all jitters and impatience
and fear,
but I’m no longer
anything innocent.
He offers me another.
Says I have time for it before
they call my phone with worry.
I take it, just one more time.
He moves closer to light it for me.
