https://Voice.club - It was the musty smell that drew her in. The smell was reminiscent of homemade quilts placed lovingly over her on cold nights. Her mind embraced an odor of playing in the decaying barn, turning plowshares into swords and ladders into ship masts where pirates fought, and reputations were born, while rain rapped rhythm on the roof and the spray softly soothed her face.
It was being caught under the front porch listening to the females of her family disclose daily gossip and her uncle play “I’ll Fly Away” on guitar, while soprano voices lifted into flight on the ascending song, and the enveloping odor of ivy-encrusted tree trunk and shed where she and her cousin shared tears, laughter, and secrets of their youth.
It was a box from the attic which, opened, revealed flowers picked by a young man’s hand, presented with a kiss, then pressed between pages of letters which told of love promised, pursued, and then purloined by Washington bureaucrats with an unclear need for control.
It was her face hidden within folds of her mother’s skirt when the message came of death in Southeast Asia. It was flowers left to decay around the grave.
It was joy, and comfort, and sadness, and love.
It was past, present, and potential.
It was all of life in one breath.