Compost Studios

When she strolls along the fence line, the warm air is heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, and it transports her back to a time when her life seemed full of possibility.

She remembers summer mornings that started with a six-mile run through the green tunneled country roads of her youth and sultry evenings when she couldn’t wait for a certain boy to park the car and kiss her while heat lightning flashed on the horizon.

The memories are sweet and powerful. Like the scent of the honeysuckle.

Thirty years later she escapes the house and walks in the evening. She feels the backward pull of the past as she slowly passes the manicured yards of her neighborhood. The brick houses and perfect lawns speak of stability and accomplishment, a life set in concrete, built on big decisions made long ago, commitments renewed every morning.

She knows all about that--the security of straight lines, the weight of steadiness.

She veers off the road and down a dirt path that takes her from the world of carefully planted azaleas, rhododendron, roses, and irises to woods touched by wild climbing vines and crawling groundcovers, steeped in last season’s leaves, scented with the sweet smell of newness and decay.

It’s buggy but cool, and she sees a doe and fawn bound off as she rounds a curve, their white tails flashing as they retreat to a greener place . The woods buzz and rustle with secret life and she likes it here, far away from the neighbors, the joggers, the cyclists splitting the air with aerodynamic speed.

The earth is soft and a little muddy and slows her pace. She plods on under the leafy canopy as the sky disappears and darkens. The light is steadily fading, the shadows deepening, but she’s reluctant to surrender the day and return to the safety of the paved road.

Instead she inhales the scent of honeysuckle and remembers a sense of freedom, her ragged breath, the way her legs, once lean and tan, pumped up and over hills, the way the wind lifted the curtain of hair off her neck like a lover and brushed wisps of it away from her face.

She remembers the boy, the exact way the hair curled on the nape of his neck, the worn cotton of his shirt, the faint whiff of soap, the silky feel of the skin on his bicep, the square firmness of his hands, the tender spot beneath his ear, and the words he whispered in hers.

She sighs and heads toward home, keeping her head down, her eyes locked on the thick and twisting roots anchoring the trees. In the gathering night, they resemble snakes across her path.

May 28, 2008