it’s getting bad

you know it's bad when you glance outside and it looks like the world has been coated in one of those too-bright camera filters that makes everything appear slightly over saturated.

you know it's bad when you have a cold and can still inhale and recognize the sickly sweet burning smell that's become all too familiar the past few years.

you know it's bad when typing air quality map into the search bar has simply become a reflex, and the climbing numbers, the unhealthy or severely unhealthy registering without the shock they used to hold.

you know it's bad when your family owns too many fans and have to look into air conditioning installment because keeping windows open in late summer isn't an option.

you know it's bad when you stop calling autumn 'autumn' and start referring to it as 'fire season', the months it lasts stretching out even longer, much too long, september an october now becoming late july through november, smoke-free months dwindling as people determinedly ignore the signs of climate change.

it's easy to pretend when half your state isn't burning, right?

you know it's bad when the smoke reaches the east coast and some people just say the red sun is 'pretty', but we californians we oregonians we west coast natives know it's more than that, we know red sun means time to hide, time to stay inside maybe even wear masks till firefighters can put out the flames that read 50% contained on any website you go to, we know now that we have to fight because as more of our home gets consumed, there's going to be nowhere to flee when everyone wakes up and realizes this isn't a west coast problem it's a nationwide problem it's a world problem because

the world is going up in flames

the world is sinking

the world is flooding

the world is being

destroyed

and billions of us have to work together to stop it

or else the blaze is gonna swallow us all.