Fun fact: when the pollen grains per cubic meter reaches 50, it is considered high. It continues to just be high until it reaches 499. That’s a lot of fucking pollen. Too much, some would say. Fucking trees are fucking.

The pollen count is well into the two thousands today. Tomorrow it climbs into the three thousands. I want you to sit with that number for a moment. Three thousand. I’m fairly certain that’s higher than I have ever personally been, and that includes the time I made a batch of weed butter with my dad. The following day I tested the potency with the tiniest, teeniest amount imaginable. An hour later I was having a religious experience in the shower, seated, rocking. I have never been three thousand high. The trees have no such limit.

That is an indecent number. That is a number that has no business existing in polite society.

The trees are having sex and they have absolutely no shame about it. You cannot step out the front door without inhaling a lungful of tree sex dust. It hangs in the air like a personal affront. It coats your car. It coats your face. It coats the inside of your respiratory system and then it just… lives there.

We are locked inside. We are on allergy meds. We are on antihistamines. We are breathing as close to our air purifiers as physically possible without actually making out with them, which at this point I am considering.

The trees are screaming and what they are screaming is deeply, aggressively reproductive and I did not consent to any of it.