halloween has a smell?

Dear Heart,

October sings as the leaves stick to the wet concrete, and the sound of the crickets at dusk slowly transform into the sound of the winding wind blowing between every alleyway and every home. The smell of the air, once warm and floral, is now consumed by the smoke left behind from the old houses’ chimneys. I always used to say: “It smells like Halloween”, the scent of smoked food and damp wood. The morning frost awakens abruptly and leaves our skin chilled and our eyes full of unintentional tears.

My love for stories and childish nostalgia curses me with the adored reaction of waiting for October and wishing for it to remain stagnant. From every stupid pumpkin candle to every book I have shamefully sniffed in a library, why does the smell of wet wood and the neighbors cooking food seem to become elected as the number one smell on my list? (Yes I have a list of smells that dominate other smells.)

I think it’s because of her.

The smell of cinnamon pinecones at the grocery store and harvest meals smelling up the house has given me this beautiful trauma; a memory of my mother making me my favorite oatmeal when I was shivering cold. It’s steam warming every limb and curing every teenage problem in the books. I do believe the woman was magic…the garbage oatmeal I make would never stand a chance.

It saddens me to say, but I truly suspect people have become numb to the concept of magic. Some say it’s a sin and some say it downright doesn’t exist. What I think is people have become apologetic towards the idea of something so unimaginable as magic. Maybe they believe they are undeserving, that they could not simply compare to something as great as the moon, the stars,...God.

Our minds are the embodiment of magic. When I was brought into this world, God gifted me my mother, and my mother gifted me a soul. Some people say before we die, our life flashes before our eyes. Our favorite scenes of our movie rewind and play again.

October sings as the winding wind transforms into the sleepy winter waiting to be born again when the Earth turns just enough where the Sun decides to give us all the time of day again. Then in August, you’ll return and make every single store sell out of EVERY single Halloween decor item even possible. Just because.

The smell of the air, once warm and floral, is now consumed by a scent that a blonde girl says smells like Halloween. The morning frost awakens abruptly and leaves the windshield of our cars completely obliterated in which we press the defrost button over and over and over again until we are late for work and those unintentional tears turn into intentional tears. Just me? Okay cool. I’ll see myself out.

With Love,

Corissa