Photo via Pinterest

It was Sunday morning and I was craving breakfast sandwiches and blue plate specials,

familiarity in the form of digestible comfort from somewhere along the road, breathed into my cells. Then, tongue sensing into the smoky almost burnt edges of the iced coffee I hadn’t had in years, that way routine and ritual, even with variable effects, have of being able to soothe.

Mercury retrograde, a spinningness that causes old things to circle and swirl, and when I walked into the elevator, the scent of a woman’s faint floral perfume caught me at the knees. Reminiscent of time spent in Monterey Bay years ago, the one my high school friend’s grandmother wore. It was Carmel Valley with open winding roads, green bounteous leaves on trees, and craggy cliffs leaning over, bowing down into the mysterious flowing nature of the unassuming ocean below. Captivating and intoxicating, a weakness passing through me slightly capable of making me weep, that moment of relief when the body can let go for remembering what it didn’t know it had forgotten. Finally able to release for now knowing where the soul wants to go. Someplace similar.

That way sensory recollection lingers as a familiarity from both a short and long time ago, those memories that are seemingly from a lifetime before and yet, still this very same one. Roaming, and still asking to be revisited. The 17-years-ago-this-June kind of reminiscence, carried on a current like a meaningful dream from both a short and a long time ago.

Like caramel in my bones.