Gasoline

She’d breathe him in like the fumes of the gasoline she’s pumping into her car.

The wind chill is smacking her across her face, and the stray hair only irritates her more as his toxins fill her lungs.

The remnants of that oil slick swirl spread on the road near her boots.

The smell always makes her feel oddly at home, something hick about the plain, good-ole smell of regular 87.

And as she closes the gas cap and enters the driver’s seat, his presence floods her nostrils. The smell of gasoline, old houses, something mechanical, the ode of metal, and something I’m sure was pine and woody.

He always carried it on him whenever he went; it was how she met him. To her, he will always be that smell, a lingering memory that always comes back with any faint remembrance of it.

But all she could encapsulate that year with was a film of sadness. A gloom lurking in every picture she took, that haze that crept in the edges.

Love couldn’t fill the void that contained her love for him, and yet somehow her time with him was blanketed in a melancholy atmosphere.

Would it always be such a back-and-forth for her? She couldn’t help but wonder as a new woman if this is how all women feel?

Was your first love always so confusing? She supposed for some. The some that had examples of bad relationships growing up.

She wanted that first love fairytale after being lost for so long. She found who she was and found love along the way.

Too bad, like the smell of gas lingering on her fingertips, the smell eventually fades until the scent is gone, just like the memories of him.