The backseat smelled like the human stain, wretchedness, she said, recalling her childhood home. It was not relegated to the backseat. It was something her mama called, “The fetid pong of famine” . It wasn’t an odor. It isn’t an odor. You can’t smell it, unless you’re marked with its hunger, she half bragged. To the clean, the well fed, the over stuffed, the well-heeled, the wealthy, the affluent, it was and is odorless. They only thought they smelled something as they passed by the car, she recalled. After a moment of trying to hold them back, they arrived like a torrent, pouring over her burdened hands and between her trembling fingers. It was a good while before she could bring herself to look at me. She awkwardly smiled and then, with what seemed to be routine defiance, she said her last on the subject. It wasn’t no goddamned smell, I can tell you that much! No. What they smelled- What those fools imagined they smelled, there ain’t no words for. © 2009 mrp/thep
(The Weaver's Song)