Chapter 1
petrichor is my favorite word ever, period! i love it. the definition of petrichor, in short, is the smell of rain. in long phrases, though, petrichor defines two distinct scents- petrichor is the smell of ozone stinging through the atmosphere, of the water and clouds and the spatterings of a storm. secondly, and my favorite of the two, petrichor is the smell of mud, of earth, of the remnants of the rain pulled up from the asphalt and the earth as the clouds retreat and the storm lingers in your bones for just a moment longer.
it’s the memory of a storm recently past.
petrichor means the memory of a simpler time, of a moment where the world did not exist and it was just me and the storm clouds above and i danced fervently on the pavement, despite the hand-mark on my head and my father’s words stinging painfully in my brain.
petrichor marks a freedom i do not often get and petrichor means there was a rain that washed away the aching pain of never being enough.
petrichor means that whatever or whoever is up in the sky, even if for a moment, listened to my begging and grasping for an escape- it left me a reminder. it left me hope and it left me the pleasant smell of petrichor.
petrichor means green grass and a drought over- petrichor means fertility and growing ivy and trees’ leaves dripping little water-droplets onto your forehead, sweetened with the sap so you could just taste it as it falls down and splits over your dry, cracked lips.
petrichor means the earth below, saturated with the sky’s gift, releases its own scent and allows the grass and trees and whatever weeds to continue on and to breathe life into our dying world.
petrichor means everything to me. i am petrichor, petrichor is my love. there isn’t another thing that calms me down quite so easily. it’s a breath of fresh air and a hazy watery calm that quells the storm within. petrichor always takes my screaming hurricanes and pulls them out like a spring breeze, drifting it far away, if only for one fleeting moment.
petrichor keeps me anchored- it gives me an identity. petrichor is my favored state of existence- if i could be the embodiment of it for just a moment, setting in on a hazy, humid day for someone else to enjoy for just one moment, i would take that opportunity and hug the poor girl crying on her porch steps as the rain receded over her tear-and-sky soaked face. i would envelop her in my smoothly-roughened grasp, and promise her everything would be okay- that this is all just like the storm above- it comes and goes, like thunder strikes. just as quick as the lightning overhead that stood her hair up on end, just as quick as the smack against her face.
she will be okay. i would promise her as such, and remind her of it every time the sky began its downpour and i emerged from the thunder & lightning and the ground solidly beneath her feet, and as i fade away i will watch her face with a solid contentment as i return to myself, fading back into this unhappily fast human existence.
for even though i would have only been petrichor for half an hour, i would have lived longer than i ever could have hoped to have lived in this state. i may not have been concrete, i may not have been more than a concept the girl held onto for hope, but i meant so much more to her than the screaming within her own head.
and meaning is what matters most.
meaning is what drives her, what drives me, what drives us both because i am her and she is me and we are petrichor and we never were and always have been, all at once. all of it.
petrichor means the smell of rain, of ozone, of earth, and of a hope to be more than i am now.
petrichor means a breath of life.
