Mulch

Mulch.

It's a cold and windy morning. The weatherman forecasted rain for later this afternoon. You don't care. You don't pack an umbrella. You're walking your usual route to work. Turn right out of the house. Cross the street. Turn left and walk 5 blocks until you hit the train. Or the train hits you.

You should only be so lucky.

It smells like shit everywhere. Shit. Everywhere. You look around to track down its exact location. Homeless people? No. Dogs? No. You look down at your shoes. You look around. Nope and nope. "Where the fuck is it coming from?" you ask yourself. It's too early to be searching for shit. Usually, shit usually finds you, but it's 6 a.m. and you haven't even had my coffee yet.

This is how an external smells controls your insides. You are experiencing a visceral upheaval. Your stomach churns and gurgles. You mouth begins to water. You know the feeling; the feeling you get after a night of too much tequila. You wake up. Your head is pounding, your heart is beating too fast and too slow. The room is spinning and your mouth begins to water and you know you're going to vomit. You know that the maccaroni and cheese you ate for dinner at six o'clock with your friends is going to come back up in a neon- yellow-tequila stained stream that ejects itself from your body beyond your control. Your eyes will tear up and you'll wipe the snot away from your nose after you're done losing control.

Or maybe you've already lost control and this is the only way you get it back.
Flash back to the smell of shit.
You take a deep breath to calm your insides, but this only makes things worse. Your tounge flexes itself inside your mouth, pushing iteself against your lips in a protest against the smell. Your stomach muscles tighten and pull up inside your ribcage. You're dry heaving. And you're laughing.

It's like a sick joke that everything on the outside should smell like how you feel on the inside: like shit. The irony hits you and you cannot stop laughing on the inside. You shake your head and wish that someone else found it as funny as you. This city that has sucked the life out of you finally smells like what it is: Shit.

You move out of the way for a mother pushing an SUV sized stroller and step in a flowerbed surrounded by what it all really is: Mulch.