"Why do we even smoke?" I asked you one evening. We were standing on the porch of the house that Toby, our friend, lived in. I leaned against the wooded rail and inhaled a lit cigarette as I waited for your reply.

"It's poetic." You finally answered after a short pause. "Cigarettes make boys like us look poetic. Maybe even kind of hot if we do it right. Because girls, and even guys, love looking at a mysterious boy who smokes cigarettes at 8am before school starts, and try to figure out what makes them tick. What makes that boy so temped to try smoking. And before you know it, it's five in the morning and they're making poetry in their heads about the boy and his cigarette. And they don't care about what he's doing, it's why he's doing it. It's always why."

I exhaled smoke, but suddenly coughed softly into my hand as I did. I then stared at the cigarette in between my rough fingers.

"It's poetic." I repeated, then scoffed. "What happens if I want to stop being poetic?"

"Then smoke where no one can see you, or stop all together. Don't worry, the girls won't lose their attraction to you. You can still continue to be the mysterious bad boy that they in vision themselves with."

I chuckled. "Well shit, I'm a lucky bastard. I should keep smoking just so people get a chance to get the ladies sooner."

You didn't laugh with me.

"Don't joke about dying, it's a sad thing to happen." You muttered as you stared at your cigarettes with despair. "I think... I think we should quit. I don't want us to get cancer."

I wished that wind took those words, that it took them right then and casted them away where they would never be found. Because I knew what was happening, and I knew what you would ask next, and I was never ready to tell.

I was never ready to endure that conversation.

But the wind doesn't listen to the pleading of the foolish, because I hear them. That word reminding me of what I lost, and what I could become if I didn't stop the cigarettes from entering my lungs.

I didn't want tell you, but you already knew. Because you weren't blind or ignorant. I remember finding you staring at my father's books on how to feel happy when a loved one has an illness, your eyes confused. There was that one time when you caught me muttering to that picture of her, asking her to get better when she was already gone.

But I was never ready.

"Your mom," you started, " did sh-"

"I'm not going to end up like her just from smoking, if that's what you're implying." I said coldly. "Dead in the ground."

You watched me carefully, as though you were examining my reaction and making observation notes in your head on what to do next. As you licked your lips and gulped down your fears, your grip on your cigarette tighten.

"I'm just wondering if-"

"And we don't need to talk about her." I specified suddenly, interrupting you again. "She just... died. Went to sleep and never woke up. That's that, okay?"

"You know," you said bitterly, "we'll talk about it one day, what happened to your mom."

We stayed quiet throughout the rest of that night, and stood on that front porch while taking drags from our cigarettes. I took deep breaths, but the anger on my brows wouldn't fade. You silently watched me, sometimes you would open your mouth, almost as though you were going to say something, but you would quickly stuff your cigarette in your mouth and inhale the taste of toxin before breathing it out into smoke.

We ignored the loud music pumping the speakers in the house filled with life, it wasn't quite our taste anyway. The dim lights from the house and the lamp posts outside were all the light that we received, as the sun had already disappeared over the hills and the moon was blocked by the thick dark clouds of the night that even we couldn't tell if it was reflecting any light.

We didn't move from our spots, not even when Toby said that Ruby was playing strip poker and was already removing her bra or when Brian started to grind against a boy that was definitely not his girlfriend.

We were the first to leave though. Walking side by side and to our homes where we were meant to be asleep. We left our friends, knowing that we would get told off and probably made to pay for lunch tomorrow.

But I don't think that was what you regretted doing that night.