a crack of thunder makes us blind

After the biggest storm finished slashing over the mountains, everyone’s eyes went dark. Nothing left to see.

For a long time, the people waited, bones soaked and chilled, waiting for their vision to reappear.

It didn’t.

They learned to move by scent.

In the mornings, mothers dabbed their children’s necks with different fragrances, to better identify them when they came home. Violet and sassafras, dried lime powder and wild blueberry. In the evenings, after the freshest rain hit the pavement, the mothers wandered the soaked dusty roads, waiting for the familiar scents of their children. Then, sniffing at their palms, sniffing at their necks, tucking their children under their armpits, curling them toward their hearts. Rain-soaked and fragranced little wet birds, coiled with their mothers at the end of the day.

In the evenings, lovers found each other. Wandering through the streets, their skin echoing notes of cherries and cloves, warm espresso. When pairs finally found each other, their lips met and buzzed with nectarine, glistened with raindrops, wet skin sliding across each other, safely united.

A man sat on the park bench every night at six o’clock, his breath ripe with basil, wrinkled hands holding stories of spearmint and loss, fresh ginger and grieving. You could feel him when you walked by the crawling ivy near the park gates, hear his silent weeping, salt-laden tears that rolled off his cheeks and dripped into the blackberry bushes.

A woman leaning out the window of the brick apartment building on Main Street, black pepper staining her hands, talcum powder in her hair, her sadness of bitter plums and grapefruit. The scratch of her fingernails on the brick windowsill, her lungs rattling like loose stars. Moaning prayers to the heavens, whimpers and flames.

When my grandmother makes tea, I lean against the counter with her. We feel our way around the kitchen, familiar scents and sounds. She boils water in the copper kettle and listens for the whistle. We fill teacups with orange rind and lavender blossom, steeped in hot water. We carry the teacups to the porch, feeling the sunshine warm our faces.

“Do you remember when people could see?” I ask. I run my hands along the wood grain of the porch, let tiny splinters poke my fingers.

I imagine her nodding, her crooked teeth sharpening into a grin. Her skin of rose and chamomile.

“Oh yes,” she says, and the scent of citrus floats from her teacup. “We could see for years when I was a girl.”

The Merry Widow Waltz plays from the alley behind the Italian restaurant down the street and a dog barks. The smells of fresh baked bread from a rickety oven, old urine on the bricks along the street.

“What was it like?” The hot tea burns my tongue, and I dip my fingers in the sugar bowl, sprinkle grains on my tongue to cut the heat.

“First it was beautiful,” she reminisces, her voice like jasmine and velvet. “So many colors and images. But after a while, the world got so violent.”

I hear the slurp of her tongue on tea, hear the sigh that loosens her shoulders. Somewhere in the air, pomegranate and pine.

“After a while, it got so bad that everyone stopped seeing altogether.”

Anna Doogan is a writer, dancer, and mother of three living in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Hip Mama, Mutha Magazine, and The Literary Kitchen. She was the winner of the 2015 Hip Mama Uncensored/Unchaste Readers Writing Contest.

For more work by Anna Doogan, visit her page on our Online Sundries site.