When the air is crisp,
the smell of late autumn and early winter heavy in the air,
crackling leaves and tree pollens thick,
the light begins to slip away earlier each evening.

I peer into the meringue-streaked sky
through the rectangle frame of
my windshield,
and just like that,
my senses take me back
as if I had never left.

Stumbling home on sidewalks
stained by sick from too much fun,
or not enough,
the fun I had was nearly always the mask I wore
to conceal pain.

I remember the way the air smelled as I cried;
I remember the sound of pumps on asphalt as you screamed at me;
I remember the sensation of wood on knuckles as I struck the front deck in anger fully broken open,
like a mallet had cracked me from within my chest.

When I hear the first few notes of song after song,
together their own playlist of
memories wanted to be forgotten,
I'm the audience to a fade-in flashback.
Sometimes it happens so suddenly that I feel nauseous,
as if my body was physically ejected
from present to past,
from the totally inconspicuous to full-fledged trauma.

Even now, trauma is a ***** word
for the clash of happy smells and sounds
against their violently depressed
and repressed sentiments.
I struggle to understand how
my rapid fire of shells and casings,
my broken limbs and oozing wounds,
my PTSD ignites
within a glance at an orange horizon,
an inhale of firewood,
an echo of windy gusts shaking folded leaves from trees.

Autumn is a battlefield,
but so is winter, spring, and summer.
Every where I go,
every season that sneaks in
and fades away,
every night's sleep,
every new anxious thought;
you slither in the moments,
in between the trees,
circling round and round
waiting for the right sound or smell,
anticipating the sights unseen,
hiding within my senses,
eagerly springing to life
when I least expect it.

I exhale sharply
at 70 mph,
and I wonder when, if ever,
I will be
free.