Sod off Highway 101
You take a big deep breath in and cold air rushes into your lungs. It flows just like water, down your nose, your throat, and runs down into your chest so it can fill up your lungs. They feel tight and weighty even so full of nothing, as if they could burst. You can imagine, if they ever did, the air would surge out and slosh into your lungs in the same rush it entered; that freed fresh air would overflow into your bones, trickle through your veins, seep into your tissue, until it finally settled to pool in your fingers and toes. You wonder if it that would make you feel heavier, little lead bullets in your tips, or if it would make you feel lighter, uplifted? Before you can spare another moment for the musing, you tempt your swollen lungs with another large breath in even before you'e released the first. There is the vague scent of distant citrus and fragrant flowers, but it is too light to ever be truly recognized. It makes you feel better already. You hold it, but it forces its way back through your lips and you exhale.
The next one you savor, drinking it up with an open mouth. The air feels even colder now, it makes your teeth tingle and your tongue flinches. It almost gives you the shivers as if you're biting into firm cream. You close your mouth on the sweet air, roll it around like ice cream and feel it get warmer around your tongue. It is no longer formless water, melting ice, but a thing manipulated, a mouse rolled and battered. You play with your treat until the sensation is gone, until the air is stagnant, unremarkable, and familiar. You open your mouth to release it, smoking out its ghost in a fleeting form of vapor. Your mercy is short-lived before you take another large gulp, this time with a flavor that rests on the edges of your tongue: grass.
Your fingers twitch, palms pressed down, and transfer up the piquancy of unrefined turf. The more you move your fingers in the blades, the more sure you are that you can taste the bitter-pleasant chew, the stringy earth of it. You're sure of it but, like hearing your name in the distance, you can't be sure you really have it. You move your hands in the grass, and it abrades and cushions, strokes and slices in every angle. When you try to get a strong grip, when you try to curl your fingers into the earthy skin, it doesn't budge and the ground still only hints at spring softness. Hidden in the grass are sharp treasures and surprises in the forms of prickled burrs and stray rocks. You don't mind the tiny pinches and you roll them under your hand, feel them taken up by the long strips of grass the mowers never get. Insects tickle your fingers and when you feel a fluttering on your cheeks, you realize it's the wind.
You always know it is on its way because you can always hear it whistling, rumbling, carrying with it melodious presents: the collision of crusty leaves, humming insects, and trilling birds. Its orchestra at times and a long sigh the next, a silent expulsion of noisy vagabonds, but right now it leads the rhythm. There are chimes, big heavy tubes that ding like church bells when struck, which sound off to celebrate the arrival. It is all rushing past your ears and you're reminded of the fresh air you drank and of roaring of rapids as the wind is resonant at your ears. The howl starts low and builds, it builds until it seems near, it builds until it breaks in a shattering honk of passing truck and the music stops.
I open my eyes and I realize that for a little while, I wasn't entirely myself. I've been sitting in the body of someone else, it seems, and am only now coming back to reality. I only notice now that the honk came from a passing truck, rolling along on the street that encircles me. The driver honks the horn again, lightly, in a friendly gesture of hello but I'm too put off by being bothered, brought back, to pay much attention. I'd rather see the truck gone and am grateful when it drives off. I close my eyes again and try to bring back that other soul.
You take a deep breath but I'm still the one breathing. The air isn't sweet anymore, it doesn't smell like flowers and it doesn't smell like fruit. It smells like lingering car exhaust, pungent and thick. I wrinkle my nose and my lips curl with it. Just like before, I try to take in a big breath but it tastes entirely sour in my mouth and I expel it. My fingers twitter in the grass, anxious to feel it again, but it has sharp edges now. The skin of each of my fingers feel tiny snags on the jagged edges of the blades. It is so disappointing, not what I remember for just a few moments ago, and I hope my eyes just enough to peak. The grass looks crisp and jaundiced and, glancing at its edges, I realize how small the patch really is. It had seemed larger when I arrived, yet now it was as though it was getting smaller.
It doesn't seem as rosy anymore. It doesn't have that same sense poetry. I'm bitter by the revelation. Even so, I close my eyes one more time. I take in a deep, deep breath but nothing about it is the same.
