Smells

There’s so many smells. So many of them are bad. The rain in the city by the harbor smells like fish and car exhaust. It’s not like the rain in the country that smells fresh and clean. The hallways in my apartment complex smell like the perfume and disinfectant of cleaning products. The worst is the metal cleaner. It tastes like licking chalk. Then there’s this strange smell from people. It might be the food they cooked inside their clothes but it’s also like dead skin cells and a slight smell of urine. When they wear perfume it’s even worse. Then there’s the elevator…you can’t run from the smells there and it always smells different but always like sweat and body odor and cigarettes. I hold my nose as long as I can and if I accidentally smell then I almost vomit. Outside at least there’s a fresh breeze. But even walking to the store, I can smell every place a dog pooped or urinated. I can smell the hair of the homeless as I pass by like the smell of rotten food and I smell their own body scent magnified from lack of a shower. In the grocery store I can smell the coffee beans and the bread they baked for the day and the mold in the fruit section. I can smell sour milk like they must have some old milk jugs in a trash can in the back. I can smell the chicken and fries in the kitchen baking and I smell all of this at once and it intermingles and makes me feel sick. Only at home can I handle the smells. I burn watermelon incense and put on peppermint oil on my skin. I open a window. I don’t use cleaning products. I use soap and water. I smell the food I just ate. I smell the lamb skin in my chair and on my bed. I smell the birdseed in the birdcage. Home is where my nose is the happiest.