What's an amygdala and its relationship to the olfactory?
Probably the part of myself that makes my heart flutter
and the air move differently through my lungs when I smell
the warmth of chlorine in the air from the indoor swimming pool.

Or the truth of the man made time machine when I smell
gold dial soap and I'm suddenly in Michigan.
The combination of fear and cleanliness, with a dusting
of hymnal music and the fragility of its pages.

A psychologist at the University of Oxford labeled an
ambiguous Brie-like scent as either "cheddar cheese"
or "body odor". Even better, walking through the apartment
complex in the dead of winter, following the trails of drier sheets
being spit from vent burrowed within the bricks.

The winter evening settles down
with smell of steaks in passageways
that seeps into the wallpaper and stinks
up the breakfast room until Easter.

What an amazing thing, the fragility of time
as it averts itself in the face of smell.