Dusty cotton mouth adjectives stick Alia’s tongue to the back of her teeth. The scent swims in her head and she stumbles drunk on it. Mushrooms and candied apples, warm spice, and iron all familiar, but when combined it dances across the synapses in her brain with feet like hammers. She buckles from the pleasure of it.
Alia isn’t unlike every other girl crammed in this bar. She hasn’t bathed for a few days. She likes the smell of her own sweat. She likes the smell of most things. Quarters out of the change machine at the laundry mat remind her of her piggy bank when she was a little girl. The produce section at the grocers always familiar, everything mingles into a crisp sweet then bitter earth crunch her nostrils chew and ready for her brain; Digest digress, digest digress. All scents attach to memories. This one does not. She lights a cigarette to kill some nose buds and walks to the other end of the bar. The rolodex of images spins through her head. Nothing. She sips her beer and wipes her lips. She doesn’t do drugs, she doesn’t need them. Life is drug enough. Her senses tickle her body and peak its interests. Her memories are as real and present as her breath.
