This is not a story about smoke. It’s a story about surviving the fire.
A collection of poems exploring mental health, healing, creativity, stigma, and my evolving relationship with cannabis. These poems reflect my personal experiences and are not intended as medical advice or recommendations.
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Ghost of the First Exhale
4:00 a.m. Some nights sleep doesn’t come. Tonight, this did. I missthe heavy kind of quiet. The kind that settledafter a bowl,when my body finally unclenchedand my face felt warm,like gravity had loosened its gripfor just a little while. For a few precious hours,every muscle surrendered. My thoughts stopped sprinting. The ache became a whisper.…
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The Honest Smoke
There are nightswhen the world expects meto carry everythingwith steady hands. The memories.The grief.The questionsthat never learnedhow to answer themselves. So I step outside. The air is cool,the stars indifferent,and the lighter clickslike the beginningof a conversation. The smoke doesn’t promiseto fix me. It doesn’t erasethe empty chairs,the court dates,or the namesI still whisperwhen no…
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Smoke Between the Cracks
Some call it escape. Maybe they’re right. But sometimes it’s the only place my shoulders remember how to unclench. The world demands I carry grief like it’s weightless. Cannabis asks nothing. Only, “Sit for a while.” So I do. I breathe. I watch thoughts stop colliding long enough to hear my own heartbeat beneath the…
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One Day
Maybe one day I won’t have to choose between relief and proving myself. Maybe one day healing won’t come with conditions. Maybe one day I’ll light a joint without wondering who might judge the smoke. Until then, I’ll keep choosing the future I’ve been fighting for— one clear morning at a time.
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Green Therapy
There are therapists who charge by the hour. There are forests that charge nothing. And somewhere between them is the curl of fragrant smoke lifting toward the ceiling like prayers without a religion. I don’t chase oblivion. I chase quiet. The kind where anxiety loosens, creativity stretches, and laughter finds its way home. Healing doesn’t…
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Evidence
They might test my blood. They’ll never test the nights I stayed awake rocking babies. They’ll never measure the panic attacks I survived sober. They’ll never weigh the meals I forced myself to eat, or the mornings I got out of bed when depression begged me not to. Sometimes being a good mother looks nothing…
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Creative High
The page was empty. Not because I had nothing to say,but because my thoughts kept arriving all at once. Then came a slow inhale. Not magic. Not a miracle. Just enough silence between the noise for one sentence to become another, until the poem had written itself before I realized my heart had been speaking…
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The Stigma
They see the smoke. They don’t see the panic attack that never happened. They smell the flower. They don’t smell the sleepless nights it softened. They judge the ritual. They never witnessed the battles it helped me survive. Funny, how the loudest opinions so often belong to people who’ve never carried your pain.
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The Quiet Trade
I didn’t quit because I stopped needing it. I quit because tiny hands needed me more. There are nights when sleep still hides, when food still tastes like cardboard, when anxiety paces the hallway inside my mind. And sometimes I remember the little green flower that once taught my lungs how to breathe again. But…
Between Bruises and Blooms 