This past winter I was nothing but tired.

Smoke sank into Reno like slow water into a bowl

and the Common App was released;

my friend and I were up at midnight four states across,

in two different time zones, clicking madly the little arrow,

computer screens sparked to light like an ember,

the glowing tip of a cigarette

flicked to screaming heights by a careless visiting salesman.

I was instructed to breathe deep as the smoke and ash fell into

this crater of dry grass,

this ridiculous ball-pit city—

 

“Breathe deep, because it will settle once you have acclimated.”

 

Acceptance rates are at an all-time low

(an Ivy is not a match whisper that to yourself)

the smoke, meanwhile, has been contained at 20 percent

and I breathed deep, spinning flecks of white dust into my lungs.

 

“It will settle once you have acclimated,

like you have always been

this heavy…”

 

and the smoke has been contained at 15 percent

but the eye of the sun has faded to an indifferent red

and taken no notice.

Regardless I have written three thousand words tonight

each one to be read by dry and faded eyes.

 

I want to make time an untameable entity.

I want to spend one day without a sparking hot screen.

 

The fire has been contained at 5 percent and the flames

have engulfed thirty thousand students

all applicants to your Harvards and Yales

eyelids frizzing they stared quietly up at the dying sun

made red by smoke and the itching weight of their heavy minds

(they hardly even noticed when they could no longer see)

“Breathe deep, because it will settle,” someone hissed

late at night, when my laptop’s glow had left me tossing and turning

at three A.M., the lonely insomniac’s hour.

 

I want to walk ten thousand steps on solid ground.

I want to spend one day touching only real things.

 

The fire has been contained at 0 percent.

Firemen have been tossing down hoses all day,

scratching their heads in bewilderment,

unable to take their eyes off the shrieking flames.

They will not notice

when it begins

to snow.