i’ve taken up a new activity before bed: naming five things i saw during the day for each color of the rainbow. red: long red ship like a log in the bay, blushing tree outside City Hall… orange: miniature construction cones tacked onto tree stumps, beak of sing-song seagull… if i’m lucky, i don’t make it past yellow.

last night, i awoke at 2:46 a.m., started a second round of the color game, made it through the end of purple; ROYGBIV won. i rooted around in my loose, billowing sheets, but reprieve from the train wreck of my consciousness never came—a recurrent pattern, or just Nyquil withdrawal. my immune system was not built for college life, so i caught an infectious disease the first week.