you don’t know sh*t, sweetie

when I was seventeen

which unfortunately

is an age you have to be

to become a fully formed

human being

activists, like girl scouts

were selling pins outside

of a grocery outlet

for an anti-drugs campaign

that I decided to be

a martyr about

for no reason, I told them

while walking to my car

that "drugs saved my life"

because I took Prozac

and therefore knew everything

completely dismissing them

an entire campaign around addiction

surviving substances that eat you

from the inside out, like maggots,

who feed on you before

you're even inside a coffin

which at my precious age

I didn't know, and looking back

I wish the activists had yelled

at my ignorant, receding shadow

"why don't you go f*ck yourself"

because that's what needed

to be said, I needed to be told that

drugs kill, and to come back

when I was a grown up

and finally human