Vanilla and Decay

The day is sunny, with temperatures in the mid-seventies, but the briskness of the air makes it clear that summer is long gone, its thick green perfume replaced by rich brown scents – burning wood, dry grass, decaying leaves. In October, even the prairie develops the aroma of a forest, damp wood slowly melding with soil. The atmosphere is far from humid but still full, laden with fragrance instead of moisture. It’s like the air in a lumber yard, where miniscule particles of sawdust fill your lungs while the scent and accompanying texture make you crave deeper breaths. I have not spent an autumn in this town since I was seventeen, and I suddenly have an overwhelming desire to remember what it’s like.

I leave the house unlocked and stride out into the cool afternoon to wander without aim. A few blocks westward, I notice that I’m walking in the road, but it doesn’t matter because not a single car has passed. Even so, the streets are far from silent. I listen to lawn mowers buzzing across the grass for one last time before the snow flies, slicing through still-green spikes to release not the lush, wet smell of summer’s cut blades but the chalk-thick, woody aroma of autumn. I listen to children shouting and dogs barking, playing wildly in the afternoon sun. I listen to leaves crunch underfoot and rustle on trees in the wind, jagged orange and yellow shapes curling into brown at the edges as they slowly become dry and brittle and noisy. By the time I make it home, the sun is beginning to set, and the indoor air glows warmly on my chilled skin and smells inexplicably of vanilla.

Much later, in stockinged feet and the silence of settled darkness, I will step onto the front porch, shutting out the sweet aroma of vanilla to inhale pure lungfuls of cold air and decay.