Breeze

A warm day in late spring, and the whole world is breathing out sweetness. Trees that held their breath through the long winter exhaling green, sultry roses seducing the neighborhood with perfume, vines lifting their leafy faces to the sun - everything scented and filling the air with life.

We walk by an apartment building, and all the bins are out for garbage collection, and even that smell, the ripe pong of trash, isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever smelled. I don’t inhale too deeply, of course, but there’s a pungent flash of rot, a momentary spike of unsavoriness that’s almost immediately swept away in the gentle breeze, leaving nothing but a waft of dust and the smell of sun.