Returns.

 


I found an untitled text edit that must be something I jotted down upon returning back to my flat from being in the US for a month.

Our flat smells.  Not in a blehhh that smells kind of way.  But how you walk into a friend's house for the first or second time and it just has a scent.  Maybe you've caught it on their clothes before, or borrowed their shirt and it just has a certain smell that fades the longer you forget to give it back.  It could be laundry detergent, cocoa butter, the muted undertone of cats, sea breeze air.  It's one of my favorite things about visiting a friends house.  Especially because they don't notice it all--because to them, it's invisible.  Undetected.

So when I came back to my flat in East London, having been in the US for close to a month, it had that I-don't-live-here smell.  And for a moment I got to be all the acquaintances and strangers that have ever walked into our place.  Sanne's room faintly smells like her parents' house in the Netherlands.  Even my room smelled foreign.  But it's all back to normal now.  It's gone.  But you gotta love little fleeting things like that.