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For those learning to pause before they begin again, this scent captures the peace moment of returning. Between books and blooming branches, she found a stillness that had long been missing. he scent of oakmoss and spring air carried her not just back to school, but back to herself. A reminder that sometimes, it takes slowing down to truly move forward. Yesterday let go, Today unfolded gently, and Tomorrow began to bloom.
I always find myself veering off after class, drawn like a secret ritual to the old oak by the west wing of Library. The frayed canvas of my bag brushes against the moss-covered steps as I settle down with a half-warm sandwich from the corner store. My fingers brush a dusting of sea salt—the flakes caught by the wind, spinning away with the citrusy breath of the Hudson drifting past. At thirty, returning to Columbia feels like wearing a borrowed life, until a Brazilian girl offers me a slice of honeydew, lightly dusted with sage. “You smell like the first rain after the dry season,” she says. I almost believe her.
Spring doesn’t arrive all at once. It trickles in on picnic day. The Japanese boy unfolds a blue-dyed cloth around his seaweed bento; the Iranian girl releases bits of dried lavender from her scarf like breadcrumbs for the breeze. Lucia opens a jar of fig jam, and syrup drips lazily down my wrist, soaking into the dirt. “That’s not sanitary,” I say automatically, my voice still shaped by deadlines and office elevators. The Italian boy just smiles and leans in. “Cathy,” he says, licking the sweetness from my hand, “the best wine comes from mold.”
We lie back on the cool grass, letting new leaves and petals float into the foam of our coffee. Someone tucks an iris into my hair—“Purple suits you,” they say. I close my eyes as the shadows of cedar branches flicker across my face, and the weight of last night’s stress over my unfinished paper begins to lift, like moss warmed and dried in the sun.
When evening comes, the light turns amber, spilling across my collarbone. The river glows gold. Just before I leave, I break off a small piece of bark blanketed with lichen and tuck it into my coat pocket. It settles beside a sandalwood bookmark. Like the heels I once locked away in a drawer at work, it waits—quietly—for the next time I’ll walk barefoot into something new.
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