Passing Rosemary
Each evening you walk the day off. Release the cheapening worries. The minutae of it falls away with each step, moving in ascending keystrokes, each paving slab a new chapter, a new possibility with every foot-fall. There is light rain, maybe a breeze.
Sometimes it is early enough that the precinct stores are still open, their kaleidoscope of scent jostling for your description, which you can offer in lieu of cards or coins. You walk through the feast and reconnect to your senses. To your sensual self.
And breathe again. Soon you will smell the rosemary.
You pass the Italian bakery in a cloud of lemon and basil, the clink and chatter of the vanilla-bean cafe, the warm soot and beeswax of the shop that sells reimagined portals – refurbished fireplaces, doors and stained-glass window panes decorated with bees, flowers and cranes, each one backlit like tiny theatres.
The spiced incense from the Polish woman caretaking the hospice store vies with the hot linen of the laundrette, ripe vegetables and baked goods in the low sunlight outside the deli, pear-drops from the nail bar.
You are but a loose bundle of igniting atoms amongst this daily fanfare of light and scent. The banality of duty, the weary pettiness of little politics, the mediocrity of detractors – these can dance about your edges but cannot can touch you…
