Normally I would have showered the night before. A handful of us were end-of-day showerers, but I was still on my summer morning-shower schedule, and I'd been up late chatting with Kammy and July, and a few others who had come and gone, and by the end of the evening I didn't have the energy to get my towel out from my luggage, get my soap and shampoo, walk down the hall, get soaked and clean, dry off, and then go to bed. So, I put it off until the morning, but I made sure my phone alarm would get me up early enough that almost no one else would be awake. I didn't want to compete for the showers on the first day of classes. Or ever. The less that my fellow dorm-dwellers had to see me naked or nearly-so, the better.

I wanted to hit the ground running, so I forced myself out of bed as soon as the alarm woke me, relieved that my sleep had been dreamless. The sketchbook page with fire and smoke and flight and heavenly choir and random, assorted text was still staring at me from the desk where I'd left it. Part of me wanted to shut the book—looking at it made my skin crawl a bit—but I wouldn't close it until I had at least started to turn the sketch into a proper... something. A story, a poem, something, I didn't know what.

I made sure that my nightgown was arranged properly, grabbed my towel and toiletries, and headed for the shower. I had calculated correctly: only one stall of four was occupied when I got there, so it was easy to find a place to hang my clothing and get into the shower without being bothered. I took quick showers, partly a benefit of keeping my hair chin-length, partly a result of parents who were both rushed in the morning and a little bitchy about water bills, and partly because I wasn't too keen on being naked alone. The discomfort wasn't the only thing left from the dream, and in that space, even there, it was tempting to try to relieve a little bit of the sexual pressure building in my body.

Come on, it's not like you're going to explode if you don't, I told myself firmly. Certainly those thoughts were just a result of being on such a long dry spell. Kammy telling stories about her temporary beau back home didn't help, and July chiming in with a few stories of her exploits (even though her tastes were more... as Rita put it, sapphic) only made things worse, not that I let on. And it was fun, for sure, hearing about my friends' breaks, and they weren't the only ones with stories. While I didn't have any sexy stories to share, I had commentary to add, and a few non-sexy tales to tell, mostly bitching about my family and my summer job, but also celebrating my first two professional poetry publications in an actual magazine (that I was sure no one would read).

Soap and shampoo actually felt good. It was warm in my room, and I kept myself warm too, so a little bit of accumulated sweat came off my skin and refreshed me some. I was mostly finished when I heard the other shower shut off, which increased my temptation to touch myself. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I heard the door open before whoever else had been in the shower could possibly have left, meaning someone else had come in. I mentally moved my getting-laid schedule up to sometime before Thanksgiving. I was reasonably certain that if I put my mind to it, I could find a cute academic guy that would help me with my issues.

I shut off my shower, wrapped in my towel, and stepped out, rosy and warm from the water. My pale Irish skin had a tendency to get a bit lobstery when even mildly steamed.

Rita was there.

I hadn't seen her the night before, and sitting there on the bench, naked except for a blue towel in her lap that covered nothing whatsoever, she didn't seem all that imposing. She never really had, except for that one moment the day before, and she didn't have that fire in her eyes that brought me up short. Really, she looked like a happy math nerd with a summer glow and a relentless smile.

"Hey!" she said with a grin as I approached. She seemed absolutely unconcerned about her nudity. "First day, yeah?"

I nodded. "Normally I shower before bed," I started to explain.

"Yeah, I was up late chatting, too."

"Oh yeah? We didn't see you." I moved towards the booth where I'd left my stuff, a little reluctant to drop my towel and expose myself to the scrutiny of someone who might somehow find me attractive. Women had never really featured in my fantasies, and really weren't about to, but the idea that I might feature in theirs—and specifically in Rita's—shook me some.

I'd have to think about that.

"Yeah, sorry," Rita continued, for some reason not acknowledging my internal conflict. "I was in the caf until they closed down, hanging with the theatre kids. They just kept coming in!" She laughed as I finally pulled my towel off, and I took a moment to convince myself that those two things weren't related. "A lot of them live there. I'm thinking I wanna switch majors, actually. I love math, I love theatre, but I think I love 'em in the other order."

"I feel that," I said, grabbing my nightgown and turning to face her. "Creativity can be a powerful thing."

Rita nodded enthusiastically, standing up and putting her towel under her arm. And there we were, two not-all-that-impressive white girls standing naked in the shower, one damp, one dry, both with the means to cover ourselves, neither doing it.

I wondered why I was even thinking of it.

"I know," Rita agreed, and she seemed like she was about to say more, but stopped herself. I thought of her roommates (and lovers?) back home, the digital artist and the 'amazing' musician. Instead, she said, "I got wrapped up in so many great conversations last night, and, uh..." She shrugged. "Lost track of time, I guess. The caf closed and I wound up hanging with a couple of guys in their dorm room until like three in the morning."

I blinked. "You seem pretty wide awake, considering you would have got, what, three hours?"

"Oh, I didn't sleep," she said, so matter-of-factly that I couldn't help but believe her. "They finally realized the time and turned in, and I just headed out for a walk."

"For three hours?"

"Mhmm! The stars were so beautiful, they told me so much," she said, and her voice became this strange mix of memory and worship that I couldn't really understand. "And then the start of the sunrise... I could feel Divinity around me, in this sleeping school with so much potential, so much creative energy just waiting to be unleashed."

She wasn't looking at me anymore, but kind of... through me. Her eyes were fixed on my chest, but I didn't feel like she was leering. I didn't really feel like she was in the room at all, in that moment.

I chalked it up to exhaustion on her part, but that felt like a cop-out even then. There was obviously something going on with her that I couldn't understand, and I wasn't sure that I really wanted to. The talk about 'Divinity' made me more than a little uncomfortable, too, and brought back the memory of a choir of angels from a dream I'd had while napping, as well as my parents' attempts to improve their relationship by dragging each other, and me, to a local church every week for a few months when I was nine.

I forced myself back to the moment. "You didn't sleep the night before first classes?" I also forced myself to pull my nightgown on. I had to get on with my day, as much as I wanted to find out more about Rita's experience.

She seemed to come back from outer space in that moment, and she laughed, loud and clear. "It's the first day! Who cares, it's just going to be a bunch of syllabus lectures and getting-to-know-you kind of things. If I fall asleep in Calc Two, no one gives a shit." She turned and headed towards the stall I'd just vacated. "See you later, yeah?"

"I'm sure," I said as she disappeared behind the door. I took a couple moments at the mirror to straighten out my hair and then headed back to my room.

The picture from my dream still sat there on the desk. I reached for the corner of the page. I was going to turn to a blank paper, start fresh, put it behind me.

I couldn't.

I couldn't force myself to turn that page.

My hand trembled.

The paper might as well have been a lead slab. I couldn't muster the strength to flip it over.

"If you can't call me," I whispered, not sure what I was saying or to whom, "why can't I let you go?"

The words scared me. I didn't know what they meant.

I could feel the heat from the fire I'd drawn. I was sweating, even with the cool air and my damp skin.

My eyes locked onto the hole I'd made in the page. The warmth seemed to come from there, and I imagined the slash catching fire, burning up the whole page, dissolving it into smoke, leaving the rest of my book untouched.

No matter how hard I fantasized about it, though, the page just wouldn't ignite.

If I had the power to set dreams alight, I thought.

I shivered.

My hand held the corner of the page.
If only I had the power to set dreams alight
To save myself from fire with fire
To fly so far above the smoke, and fear, and fight
To burn this violence on ashen pyre

I pulled back from my book and shook my hand as if the paper had shocked me. I backed to the far corner of my room, wanting to be as far away from the sketch as I could, sitting on my bed. I turned to face the wall.

I gritted my teeth. The rhythm was wrong. It was all iambic except that first dumb line. And yet it felt right. It made my toes twitch, the argument with myself.

Oh if I had the will to... no... Only with the... And only with... And on-ly with the will that... sets... a dream... a-light...

That'd work. That'd do. I grabbed my phone and quickly jotted down the verse.
And only with the will that sets a dream alight
That saves my soul from fire with fire
That flies so far above the smoke, the fear, the fight
That burns this violence on an ashen pyre

I had to smush the word 'violence' into two syllables to make it work, but it did work. I considered changing the first 'and' to 'that,' just for repetitiveness, but I had a draft, and that was enough, and I was hungry.

I turned back from my wall, stood up, slipped my sandals on, did not look at the picture sitting on my desk, and almost ran down the stairs to the main floor. It was still early enough that there wasn't anyone else there, so as per tradition (and for safety) I waited by the door, phone in hand, checking in on my socials. Nothing especially new from home, the usual political stuff I just moved past, ads for garbage I didn't need... Boring boring boring. I was about to slip into amusing myself with a mindless puzzle or two, when the elevator door opened. Kammy stepped out with two women I didn't know. She was chatting with another athletic Black woman, and they were followed by a mousy girl with hair dyed green and large glasses. Kammy had a long nightgown like mine, the other two wore plain pyjamas.

"Hey sister," Kammy said, noticing me. "Breakfast?"

"Yep!" I said, turning my phone screen off. "Don't know that I've met—"

"Regina," the woman Kammy was talking to said, offering me her hand. She pronounced it like the city.

"Nice to meet you," I replied, taking her hand. She had a strong handshake. Meanwhile, the other girl ignored us and headed out the door. "You play baseball like Kammy?"

"Here on a soccer scholarship, actually."

"Awesome," I said. "First year?"

Regina nodded. "Anthropology."

"Fourth year, English, Creative Writing."

"Nice."

Kammy waved towards the entrance. "Regina stopped by after you headed to bed last night," she said as we made our way out into the crisp September air. "'Course, we've been chatting for a few days, since we got here."

"I'm a bit nervous, first day and all," Regina added with a bit of a shiver. "Yikes, y'all just walk around like this in this weather?"

"Uh huh," I answered. "It gets colder, too."

"Fuck me." She crossed her arms over her chest.

Kammy and I laughed as we all headed into the bigger dorm, ready for breakfast. Standing in line in silence, I realized that I was subconsciously, and then consciously, scanning the cafeteria to see who was there, followed by the realization that I didn't want to see Rita, specifically, there. Which was weird. I liked Rita. Our conversation earlier was friendly, if a little bit odd.

So why was I hoping to avoid her?

I didn't actually have to ask myself that, I knew the answer. The answers. Every part of what she'd called herself screamed it to me. A kinky polyamorous sapphic exhibitionist seer. I didn't want to be a part of her kink, whatever that was. I didn't want to be another one of her girlfriends. I was attracted to men, not women. I didn't want to see her naked, not again, not knowing that might in itself be part of her sexual expression.

That last one. Seer. That look she gave me of complete understanding, that set fire to my mind. What could she see? What did she know? I didn't want someone looking at me like that. I didn't want someone seeing into me, knowing things about me that I didn't want known.

Was that why I was anxiously looking through the room to see if Rita was there?

Did others feel that way around her?

I had to talk to Kammy about it. Not there, not in the cafeteria. And not then, we had classes coming up.

I distracted myself, settling into small talk. I needed to think about other things. And to not be, well, weird. A bit of weirdness was expected, for sure, it was day one of classes, everyone in the room was out of their usual element, but I was a veteran at this point. It was my fourth first day. My final first day. I needed to lead by example, and do my best to be the least-weird person in the room.

And that meant talking with the two athletes at the table, and not constantly scanning the room.

Regina was easy to talk to, it turned out. She had a quick laugh and a sharp mind, was really just taking general first-year but doing mostly anthropology courses, and had a tough time deciding between her two passions of soccer and dance, so she put aside jazz, hip-hop, and tap, and did her dancing on the pitch. Her words. Her actual ambition was to teach dance to kids, but her parents insisted that she get a degree, especially since she was able to get a sports scholarship. She came from the west coast, had three brothers (two older, one younger), and was looking forward to seeing what she could learn. Sounded like a perfect student, to me.

Sounded like me in my first year.

Kammy was somewhere in the middle. After a gap year, she was twenty and in her second year of chemistry. She missed home, friends, family, her (as she put it) piece of ass, but she was happy to be back with the rest of us. Science was the right place for her, she knew.

And me? Very happy to be back, because it meant I wasn't at home. I tried not to bring the mood at the table down with too much truth, but I kept wondering if the tension would ever break and my parents would split or my extended family would break down and start openly feuding. I had plans to go anywhere else in the world but home once I graduated. I'd probably need to find some place for post-grad instruction, find some mentor or other, just get some writing out there into the world. I was Hell-bent on graduating regardless, even if the question of what to do with a degree in creative writing hung over me like the sword of Damocles (second year, Classical history).

Everything became laughter and light for a short while, even as the room got more and more crowded and noisier. I lost track of time, it was so easy to do, but then my phone notification went off, and so did Kammy's, and Regina's, and it was time for us to go back to the dorm, get changed, and get to our classes.

I wanted to hit the ground running, and I did. I was back up to my room, changed out of night gown and into comfy clothes, made up nice and simple, and—

and I paused, just for a moment, to look at the sketchbook.
And only with the will that sets a dream alight
That saves my soul from fire with fire
That flies so far above the smoke, the fear, the fight
That burns this violence on an ashen pyre

I had the words tapped into my phone, but they were burned into my brain, as much as that melody that had sung to me.

Didn't matter. Class time. If whoever-it-was couldn't call me, the courses I spent a lot of money on could, and with a laptop strapped to my back (in my backpack) and a phone in my purse, off I went, ready for another year, trying my best to leave my worries in my dorm room.