A smell

There's a smell the world gets
especially inside my house
when the temperatures rise and the snow melts
and the ground starts to breathe
and our windows get cracked open for the first time. 
It feels like the earth's rotation is starting again
after months of frozen stasis. 
It feels like the house breathes again
after months of clinical silence. 
It smells like a whole world exists beyond our windows. 
It feels like a weight lifted off my chest, 
the weight of not shivering, 
of instead breathing and finding the whole world before me, 
like putting on happy music because it fades back and brings me peace.
And I don't usually like happy music.
It smells like pain,
and every time I properly notice it, 
it frightens me.
It smells like darkness,
and the first time I smell it I try to remember
why, 
but it always slips away. 
It smells like something I can't control,
no matter how hard I try. 
It smells like that feeling in your chest
like your heart is stretching
and like there's too much space within your ribcage
and how you should be fighting for breath but instead you breathe,
and you don't know where from or how
but you inhale,
because breathing is not something you should question. 
It smells like the emptiness where panic isn't. 
It smells like the trunk that opens, 
full of the emotions I suppressed
without meaning to. 
It feels like the weight of winter lifting off my body
and allowing me to reinflate
and the fear and anger and sadness and surprised joy 
none of which I ever really noticed
crawl out of the open trunk on the open air
bringing with them a smell of sweetness
and decay. 
It feels like letting go
because there is always darkness to the smell of the earth taking its first breath of the new year
and it means closing your eyes 
because the tightness in your chest is opening,
just a little, 
as the smell rises up.

Fiona Ella

VT

YWP Alumni

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