They say that smell is the strongest sense connected to memory. I wonder if that's true; it's been proven many times in me.

I smell the dusty stench of mud in which I fell off a bike for the first time (right before my family went to go to the mall) and remember the bath I was thrown in for ten minutes just to get the goop off of me. I smell hot pavement and recall chasing the ice cream truck barefoot - I had blisters on my toes but the cool vanilla flowing over my tongue was well worth it.

I remember the first day of kindergarten - my dad gave me a hug outside the door on that cloudy day, and every time I smell rain I think of the way he told me it would be ok. I cried anyway.

I remember my third grade birthday party by the dry California earth floating up to my nostrils every time someone would give another push with their feet on the tire swing. I got sick from spinning but I ate cake anyway, and got the sweetest gift I ever received from a guy. I think I imagined it sweet because all the other guys teased him for giving me that lovely necklace.

Hot rubber. The feel of a ball against my chapped fists as the handball tournaments outside my fifth grade classroom during recess. In my mind I always won, even though I hit it too hard and the ball went out of bounds every time.

Chalk Something about that scent changed me in the sixth grade, leading me to the darkest periods of my life.

I remember the smell of freshly cut grass and sweat from my freshman year when my innocence was eternally removed. I think of this instance not only when I smell the sweet ends of deadened grass, but when a man wears the same cologne or hair gel as the one I remember so fondly, so bittersweet. I curse him in my mind, even though I don't know the poor fool, simply because he brought back a longing which can never be fulfilled.

Blood smells metallic. It tastes metallic. And it's really good when it comes from recently split veins.

And the smell of death - the most rank stench of them all, if only because cold meat never was appealing. At least it's soft, the padded walls of a pale red coffin. Does the coffin smell metallic? Or is it the earth seeping into my open mouth, floppy after the stiffness of rigor mortis?