Fire Ritual and Ash Scars: Zach Fraser

Let me preface this by sharing exciting news with you all. Those of you in class Thursday met briefly my friend Nicole who will be attending Evergreen next year. Nicole is one of the people I spoke to while in my perimeter and the girl I wrote the piece I shared at the ritual for. Serendipity is amazing that way. I spent the Friday posing as an incoming freshman and hanging out with her. It was A Good.


The digitalized melody of a cellphone commences and grope clumsily for its source. She'll be here in five minutes, so states the text message that awoke me. Realizing, after a pause, the urgency of the sittuation I begin with my forehead; the estimated location of mine third eye. I follow the trail of tears and disguise myself as a cheetah. My hair is next, then my chest, my arms. The kindness of strangers, she's already here. Like a child on the sand I ask her to cover my back, my shoulders. We are of paradise.

Later I sit in the Longhouse with Three Hundred other people. Les Purce gives a speech the almost moves me to tears. The incoming freshman can think whatever they want about my ashen ed countenance and ragged clothes, it doesn't matter while she's smiling. I beam right back at her and as our smiles meet I know meaning.