If Icarus Did Drugs

"Let's keep looking"

she said as we trekked deeper into central park,

trying to find a place where there were no cops

(so we wouldn’t get caught)

and no kids

(because I’d feel bad smoking in front of kids).

I was 14 and terrified and excited and confused,

as to how I became the teenager

in the black hoodie

with the dead eyes

and the blunt in her pocket.

It was four days after my birthday and the first time no one sang me happy birthday or even seemed to remember that is was in fact my birthday, which is fine,

because 14 isn’t a big deal, not like 16 or 21,

so I guess it’s really fine.

Really,

it is.

As a gift, my friend Achlys took me to have my first smoke.

There was a sadness

like a pool of cool murky water

in the bottom of my heart.

She promised the flames of a lighter would evaporate it,

and they did,

but not really.

It just filled my mind with so much fog

I forgot I even had a heart,

forgot I was human,

felt wings sprout in my back and,

(convinced I was dead and now an angel)

I began to fly.

“Lay on your back, it feels nice” she called to me through the clouds.

Then I remembered I was standing on a warm slab of stone

in Central Park,

not in the sky.

I remembered I was human

and the thought made me sick to my stomach.

So I surrendered to gravity and lay on my back

dreaming of the next time

I would be able to reach those heights. 

“Let’s keep looking”

he urged as I opened each drawer and cabinet of my mothers bathroom.

Everytime we came across an orange pill bottle,

we’d search up the name,

seeing if any of them could get send us soaring.

My mother was always sick with something

always convincing doctors to prescribe her things

she never ended up taking.

Other people collect

stamps

or comic books

or bottle caps,

my mother the hypochondriac collects prescription medication

she never lets past her lips.

I was 15

and the type of tired sleep cannot cure,

covered in burn marks from bathing myself in the flames

I used to keep out the cold.

When Anake finally came across three full bottles of

white capsuled anxiety medication,

he wore a smile like sunshine and handed me five.

They left a bad taste in my mouth

a slimy feeling in my throat

and within an hour the pool of water in my heart,

(that had since grown into an ocean)

dissipated.

I was weightless once again.

That familiar set of wings sprouted in my back,

the warmth of the sun called me to it

the stars were stepping stones,

pulling me up,

lighting my path,

removing the weight from my shoulders.

Once I was nearly close enough to swallow the suns blissful rays,

I opened my eyes to realize

the stars were made of plastic and taped to my ceiling.

My wings had vanished,

disappeared into bedsheets,

and the ocean had only grown deeper. 

“Let’s keep looking”

I repeated like a prayer on my tongue,

gathering whatever contraband I could find.

My mother was long gone,

in every sense of the words,

her absence didn’t make much difference except

no more prescriptions to set my insides ablaze,

my desperation growing like the tsunami forever tearing through my chest.

A bottle of cooking wine that dried out my throat,

six loose pills found in junk drawers and in between couch cushions

the last of a blunt that was more ash than drug.

I took them all at once.

When I was 7,

I wanted to be a chef

now here I was at 17,

crafting my own recipe of poisons.

The house had grown so quiet I’d taken to speaking out loud

to make sure I still existed

I had nothing to say, so I just repeated my own name

“Icarus, Icarus, Icarus”.

It was clear I had fallen prey to the trap Thanatos set,

chasing highs that only dug me deeper into lows

driven by my willingness to do anything

to feel nothing.

The wings sprouted in my back when the poison settled in my stomach,

coursing through those swollen veins,

chasing away the cold tsunami water.

I flew higher and higher towards everything I had lost,

even when I felt the wax begin to melt

even when my fingertips went numb

dark spots clouded my vision,

I could not go back

I could not go back down

there was nothing for me there.

I knew going higher meant never returning,

I knew the first time my lips curled around brown wax paper

that each breath I took from that point on

must be filled with smoke

or it would feel empty.

For the first time in my short life I wished I could go back in time

do everything differently,

but it was too late.

My heart began to slow as the water drained from it,

body plummeting towards the abyss

I’d spent the past three years trying to escape.

I’d gone as high as I could,

melted wax wings dripping down my legs,

flown too close to the sun.