first smells
Dec. 31st, 2023 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neonanimaThe smells I remember from my childhood are honeysuckle, clover, cigarette smoke, bamboo. Hairspray, makeup, chlorine. Marijuana, suntan lotion, baby oil baking naked skin on tanning bed glass.
The home was old and nature wanted to reclaim it. It had already retaken the outhouse and chicken coop in the woods. Flies, moths, and wasps swarmed into the frosted glass bowls of overhead lights. Ladybugs invaded and caterpillars took over the kitchen one summer. Lightning bugs secreted godawful, bitter stink into my palms and the jars I trapped them in.
Bamboo grew in a 5 x 5 ftish patch at the top of a hill near the brick patio. At the bottom of the hill, which we used to roll down, there was a clearing and a peach tree with scabby bark. I'd climb it and lay on one of the limbs, pick the fruit that was always half purpled mush or hiding a worm, but I took bites out of them anyway.
I loved to lay in the clover with a honeysuckle flowers, pull out the stem and touch the drop of nectar to my tongue.
The emerald green of leaves brightened and cleaned in the rain. The soil wet and dark and shining with puddles. The doves' soft, secret, flutey vowels, the blackbirds and geese streaking the twilight. The whip-poor-wills' call sad and anxious, the bobwhites' sound like a search party.
The home was old and nature wanted to reclaim it. It had already retaken the outhouse and chicken coop in the woods. Flies, moths, and wasps swarmed into the frosted glass bowls of overhead lights. Ladybugs invaded and caterpillars took over the kitchen one summer. Lightning bugs secreted godawful, bitter stink into my palms and the jars I trapped them in.
Bamboo grew in a 5 x 5 ftish patch at the top of a hill near the brick patio. At the bottom of the hill, which we used to roll down, there was a clearing and a peach tree with scabby bark. I'd climb it and lay on one of the limbs, pick the fruit that was always half purpled mush or hiding a worm, but I took bites out of them anyway.
I loved to lay in the clover with a honeysuckle flowers, pull out the stem and touch the drop of nectar to my tongue.
The emerald green of leaves brightened and cleaned in the rain. The soil wet and dark and shining with puddles. The doves' soft, secret, flutey vowels, the blackbirds and geese streaking the twilight. The whip-poor-wills' call sad and anxious, the bobwhites' sound like a search party.