As life billows smoke inside my head

There are days like the ones I've had recently where sleep blurs into class blurs into work blurs into the nothingness that everything important falls into. There is the suffocation feeling of capture which is only good for poetry and sentences that end with prepositions.

"How do you keep it under control?" she asked three weeks ago.

I watch for the signs, I see the smoke signals even through all the smog, and I try to stop it, I tell her. I try to stop it from coming over me and crashing down, down like the waves at Newport.

And yet, even in the midst of these waves, there is the red tide, glowing from within and there are friends' birthdays and midnight movie showings and when the fiance takes us out to a movie.

It's interesting how the two always seems to come together. Do they find each other in some twisted triangle? Like the Bermuda Triangle, swirling around out away far from here preparing to come, moving across the fault lines.

And there are days when friends come and they say, "I'm here to help you. Can I wash your laundry for you? Can I fold this pile of clothes?" And saying yes is the easiest decision to make and the only one I can.

We got her the high-thread count sheets for her birthday and her mom was impressed at what great friends we were. How did we know? How did we know to get her the best kind, not the softest? We just do.

We know what thread count to get and when to come and throw clothes in a washing machine.

I know good people.