parallaxis

the quiet of old blood, warm bread

i noticed it some months ago. i stepped into my kitchen and my nostrils immediately detected a new smell. it disappeared right then. but i was aware. my nose can never fool me. i'd smelled a smell i didn't know. and it was just, just, just on the side of offish. like a smell of dried blood. and something else. something homey. like yeast. or sour dough bread, freshly baked. and soon i was waiting for it, trying to smell it ahead of it reaching me. over days i kept smelling it only in the kitchen. i was like any animal with a nose twitching in the air...waiting, waiting, expecting. pouncing on it when i detected the merest whiff. trying to make out what it smelled of exactly. of course i hoped it would just go away. disappear. at some point i suspected it was coming from outside but i put my head inside the fridge. nothing. inside my stove. nothing. in the cupboards. nothing. in fact, when i opened any door at all to smell inside, the smell just disappeared and i could detect the smells i knew by heart, only. i cleaned the fridge anyway. and the stove. i unpacked the cupboards and cleaned and washed and wiped and watered and soaped and dried. still my nose twitched, nearly involuntarily now, on my way to the kitchen and inevitably there would be the smell, the second i stepped inside. that is how i thought of it after a week. the smell. 'the smell'.

i was distraught when i detected it in the bathroom for the first time. i felt like i could cry. there was nothing to open or close in the bathroom except that little door underneath the bath, set in the tiles. where the plumbing is. but i was too frightened to look there. it was dark there and clammy. i thought. one time i even invited ebben up to the flat. i had to know whether she could smell it too. i thought that if she did, i would open that little door while she was there and take a peek... ebben smelled nothing that time. and nor did i, actually...that day. disappointment. such disappointment.

after about two weeks, i was walking around like a blood hound. my nose was never still. i tried to smell it even when i could not. it was like a hiccup. when i smelled it, it upset me. when i did not, it upset me because i was expecting it.

the first time i smelled it when i entered my front door, i felt relieved. i thought, at last. here it is at last. i have been waiting so long for it to welcome me when i get home...and thank god, here it is now...familiar and now belonging to me.

only me.