Redolence

When I see birds
I can almost smell them

An odd thing to confess aloud

They smell like a wound drizzled by morning rain
like dust lifting softly from pavement after weather
like roses still carrying the cold breath of dawn

Not unpleasant

Just painfully alive

Ancient somehow

As though feathers preserve memories
the body spends years trying to outlive

Strange how scent reaches the soul before thought does

One breath
and suddenly the past becomes physical again

The ache gathering beneath the ribs
the overwhelming feeling
of having lost something beautiful long ago

That invisible meeting place between longing and recognition

The way certain scents return us
not only to people
but to former versions of ourselves

Softer selves
unguarded ones
the selves that still believed tenderness
could exist without disappearance attached to it

And perhaps that is why birds unsettle me

Because when they cross the evening sky
carrying the fragrance of rain and distance and earth
something inside me rises toward them instinctively

Not joy exactly
not sorrow either

But the unbearable remembrance
of who I was
before longing became part of my nature