Sticky sweat lathers the hair streaming from my forehead and presses hot protein strands to my face. I'm melting together. I'm falling apart.

High, rocking laughter hovers above my precarious bubble, coating its invisible walls, making them thicker. Chairs are around me in circles, patterned like bouncing molecules of water, me in the center. I'm oxygen. Explosive. The world rotates and solidifies. I'm falling apart.

Dripping musak is piped through the ceiling, somehow through my bubble. The notes are all the same. A crescendo escapes and interrupts the continuous influx of consumer control. The sugar coated poison darts of sound try to pierce my bubble. I have holes. I'm leaking. I'm falling apart.

Today my alarm clock went off three times, and the day before twice. But today I woke up in your arms and you were holding me together.

Every day I walk to class down a cloudy path, eyes averted from a thousand students. Driven, they're crushing my bubble and the pressure is closing in on my eyelids. It's hard to see.

Each building, each class, a part of me drips off and is left behind. I am dwindling. Almost nothing remains.

I am home and I collapse into bed. I close my eyes for a second. But there is a ding, a chime, and you are there. You put me back together.