BY NINA PIAZZA
It was one morning, before my mouth could be gagged with the muddy shame of unemployment, that I sucked in a waking breath and tasted sweet smoke.
I had left both my windows open—or rather, I had opened them sometime in May and never bothered to close them again—and chilly air had seeped into my west-facing room. I tucked my comforter around my shoulders and for once relished in my post-graduate ennui.
I like the spring because it is the end of winter, and I like the fall because it is the end of summer. There is usually about a week, lost somewhere in the spinning cycles of the planet, that resides at a sublime 55 degrees, which I have never experienced before since it unfailingly occurs during midterms or a research showcase.
September, which has been clogged by orientation, marching band, football games, textbook acquisition, and RA training for the past 16 years, is now a sprawling, gaping, horrifying stretch of wasted potential. I have discovered it’s quite pleasant.
Nina Piazza graduated in May of 2022 with a B.A. in Linguistics. She has been writing fiction for ten years and hopes to one day publish her work professionally, but for now is looking forward to her employment in the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) field this coming winter. In her free time, she enjoys cooking new recipes, losing at mahjong, and finding new hobbies to be bad at.
