The Smell in the Car

It was a compact, silver-ridden, four-wheeled

monster; a beast to the eyes of a five-year-old,

who was also carsick easily,

and runs faster than even my mighty father.

The sanguine leather seat cover

stitched right down the middle of each oblong

cover, sheens a fainting colour

Into the thin air in the car. I didn’t know

how to oblige by the dictation

of catching colours, and

neither did I know why the leather smells

funny during summer, sad during winter.

I just kept my breathes tight, squeezing them,

like sewing a loosen bag of crops during

Harvest season, and I know I should not

ask my macilent father on why his car

smelled the way it did. I knew I would be up

for lectures, or some real beatings if he snaps.

Now, unlike the seats, the smells scintillate

even to this day, where my father

grows more taut, more bubbly in comparison,

And I cannot forget how the smell enthrals

me, haunts me, then warms me to

make me find comfort, making me tuck squirt

suavely in my own pain. And I, now caught in the stasis

of my own reveries and memories, can now

resort myself to the next day, without the smells,

the car, and my loquacious father. In tranquil.