Le souvenir est un poète, n’en fais pas un historien.
Memory is a poet, not an historian.
— Paul Géraldy 

Cities are smells: Sweet is the smell of flowers, pine, and smell of the wet earth after rain. People are smells and fragrances: Hope is the smell of the cinnamon, mint and the way people hope for better days in daily toil. 

I am all skin and flesh, I am lodged in people’s souls, myself floating in the cavities that decorate every cities’ landscapes where I was in. That is how I knew people. They were what I knew, flavor of ripe fruit eaten straight from the trees, the paths of Minas Gerais, mangos, oranges, the laughter of kids loose in the wind — Kiss with jasmine smell. 

Season of people, home, family 

It was a dream, a long wait, Christmas, Easters and absence of affection, but it did not matter, we had each other, and we comforted us in our childhood games. Balmy summer nights and mandarin peels. Music playing in the neighbor’s home — The Beatles’ songs. And how people moved their hands when they spoke. The intersection between past, present and future, everything that is both lost and found in my memory fetched constantly. 

Human contradictions. Boys and girls with soft, curious eyes, beautiful hands, all hands in general, my mother’s hands with holy rosary while she was praying, strong and calloused hands of my father. Being touched tenderly, being touched brusquely, just being touched. My mother bending over her bed in the bedroom, rubbing lotion on her heels. A tight hug and honeysuckles. The way people try to say goodbye with their bodies when words are useless. Familiar cities that don’t feel like home, and unfamiliar ones that do. The smell of basil, the smell of cherry tomatoes, the smell of burned butter with garlic. The fact that none of us really know where we are going, but we are going anyway. All this blind, mad hope and hearts that perpetually threaten to vibrate out of their nests. “We are all going forward. None of us are going back. Hope that moves us.”

If I say, I have been touched by the kind way that people came into my life and they have filled me with memories, if I could change any encounter, I would not change anything, because they have written my story with poetry — gestures, glances, faithful presence and inspiration that lead me to believe that anything is possible. Even the bad ones were poetry scrawled on a sheet of blank paper that added something to my life, and it taught me something valuable: never be cruel or judge, because life is a one-way street, everything comes with the same intensity as they go back to us. Just be kind! ♥