Swimming in the Scent

Another poem I wrote last semester. It still aptly describes how i feel sometimes. Enjoy!

Prose poem: Swimming in the scent

It breathes when you least expect it. In the middle of the day after eight months of stay when you are swamped by four humongous assignments and friends are calling you to watch a movie and you feel that all this has never felt more natural, it wafts slowly behind you, perhaps from under the door, or carried by the fresh breeze, or in the dying scent in the sleeve of a blouse you haven’t worn in two months. It breathes on your neck and makes you unable to inhale. It caresses your cheek and then goes on its way. Sometimes it’s the merry thirst of coffee beans brewing in the way they only burst forth and pervade the coffee shops on New York airport. Often times it’s the incense of a Somali perfume, characteristic of the way your dorm room smelled the first time you entered it. It’s the aroma which accompanied the swimming of your insides and the hollow beating of your heart when you first sat alone in an airport, unable to anticipate your future in a foreign country. It is the whiff that still catches you unawares and makes you as nervous and awkward even after months of staying here. It is the first odor of the USA, your first breath here, the first swoon of independence and fear.