Salt

Lick your hand. Let your friend shake the salt on, sticks to saliva stained skin. Conceal the already drained shot glass with an inconspicuous arrangement of fingers. The tequila’s in the red cup behind your chair, abandoned on the floor, forming a toxic concoction with someone else’s wine. Notice it sting while she walks around the room, shaking salt on the hands of eager young tequila slammers. They complain the tequila smells bad, they’re going to be sick, all while grinning blindly and pushing their pretty hair behind their shoulders in preparation for the shot. You sit cross-legged, a veteran of seventeen and feel the salt sting.

Drinking no longer felt how it used to: all blurry and smiles. Now it’s picking up the ones who pass out in gardens; holding the ones who cry while their make-up dirties your shoulder. Charming secrets out of the ones who usually hold tight within themselves, waking the next morning none the wiser. Nights like these are almost all the same now. The bookshelf in your bedroom used to be lined with plastic bottles of spirits stolen from the kitchen cupboard, shoved with a precision that came only from a kid scared of getting caught. When exactly you stopped refilling them you don’t recall.

Shouting ensues, followed by a count down from eight, after which you lick off that damn salt and hold an empty glass to your open lips and pretend to swallow liquid fire. You grimace along with the rest and proceed to finish the ritual by sucking the life out of a piece of lime. Laugh along with your friends, when you stop you find you can still feel the sting.