WRITING: Senses

As he went up the stairs the memories rushed down to greet him. Lentil soup at Mrs. Levin’s. Dark and heavy with the sweetly scented bay leaf, the prickle of pepper and spotted with the flash of cubed potatoes like sunnies in a muddy brook.

The second floor hallway streamed with pungent corned beef and the overwhelming curly cabbage quarters locked up with a can of beer inside a pressure cooker at the McCarthy’s. Jed made his way slowly, steadily up to the third, as if the air so dense with flavor pulled upon his ankles.

Two doors down from his mother’s the walls held onto years of frying donuts, sugar-laden to soak up the oil and chewy soft and sweet. He walked on. He stopped in front of her apartment and pulled out his keys. Rattled through them to find the one odd and old that looked more like it held the secret to a treasure box than merely a boyhood home. He twisted the key in the lock and turned the knob and swung the door wide on creaking hinges.

The smell of funeral flowers long past their prime filled the apartment.