We can’t find each other– it’s
real dark outside,
cool, but not cold.

We will probably regret this by morning, nothing
left but the breath I’m losing. Forget
school; I don’t think I’ll make it home. And when

We have to stop for a breath, her motives
lurk in the air like the cigarette smoke she longs for. It’s 3AM,
late even for us. But

We don’t say much, and look for something to
strike her match with. Now she’s wondering what
“straight” even means as

We share my brother’s hoodie, and
sing anything we can remember. The
sin – or the smoke – dances in the air, but

We can’t tell the difference. This
thin hoodie somehow covers both of us, and I smell
gin or maybe whiskey on her breath.

We have never talked boundaries,
jazz, or those stars engraved on her wrist. I touch one. “Last
June,” she tells me, answering a question I never asked.

We sit for a while. My hand still covers the mark, and she says, “It wasn’t to
die,” but I stay silent, afraid to show her my own faded scars.