I’m 18 and sitting in the kitchen with my parents. I take no breaths at all and tell them when I’m evading curfew I’m actually with my basketball-player-fake boyfriend smoking weed that his 22-year-old sister bought him. They nod like
they know. My dad’s eyes trace the floorboards trying to find a grain of meaning, like why my pale pink cross country lungs deserve to be spoiled by unintelligence and disassociation. I bet my mom smoked weed, her mom used to smoke
at parties and get giggly with her friends. My grandma said she didn’t like weed because it made her hungry. My mom doesn’t tell my dad this, I learn this fact later. She doesn’t assure my dad it’s normal. She asks me how it makes me feel
and I say good. It makes me a better listener, I tell them. I see more color than I do when I’m not high. My dad asks me why I do it and I say that’s why.
He asks if I’ve ever prayed or taken a Benadryl and tried to fight it. He
asks if I’ve taken a hot shower and turned the water all the way cold at the
end. He asks if I’ve groped at the sky for Orion’s Belt or tried to have a
conversation with a baby. He asks me if I’ve ever sneezed while driving, if
I tried to keep my eyes open, if I succeeded. He asks me if I’ve memorized
every Beatles song or watched the Titanic movie two times in a row. How
many hairs come off my head in the shower when I wash it? Have I tried
to tie them together, were they all different shades? He tells me one time
he biked around the block of his childhood home with his eyes closed
and he didn’t crash, but his back tire popped on a shard of glass he
obviously didn’t see. He still made it. He asks me if I have really tried to be
a better listener, if I want weed to make me different. He asks me to describe the colors I see, are they sassier, are they juicy? What made high blues better than sober blues?
I think about all the things I’ve dug through. I think about my mom’s text messages, I think about the red mud in my childhood backyard, the rock bins at gift stores. I dig through everything I think I’ve found and everything I’m about to find and wonder why I keep going back to the sock drawer.
I tell my dad I don’t know, and that I will probably never know. He shrugs his
crossed arms, his hand cups his cheek. He tells me that I’ll probably change
my mind. ▲
