Scents and Sense-ability

Thursday, I went floating through the town. Or rather, the town came floating to me.

Green was crisp in my brain from the newly cut grass. Summer asphalt wept tarry tears. Garlic and basil sang out from across the street, where autos grumbled acrid fumes.

How funny it is to smell things before I see them. Oily metal typewriters, for sale on the sidewalk. Musty paperbacks, tattooed with basement mildew.

A man who washed in peppermint soap. Two women with citrus-y shampoo. Today’s pizza special: pesto parmesan. (It hums to me, sweetly, in lemon-salty tenor.)

Olefactory genius, I am. Bless these pregnancy hormones. I’m keen as a wolf.

Then wolf-y snout catches something musky and rotten. Two sweat-sopped teenagers draped over a bench. The curly-haired one has pulled off a sock.

I frown at a Starbucks cup as it passes. “Why can’t I smell you?” I ask the coffee. It is silent beneath whipped cream and transparent plastic dome.

Nausea wants pizza. I walk my slice to the park and sink beneath a tree that's channeling summer corn. Am still contemplating my superpowers when I get a sharp message from my leg.

Unobservant girl! I’m sitting on the home of some cranky red ants. I retreat to a park bench, quite mortal after all.