Smell

Is this the part where the brain scan shows where memories reside?
Some ambiguous shape in me, suddenly producing light.
Triggered like a trip wire every time I breathe it in,
Isn’t it strange that a lilac tree is what unlocks where I've been.
Like a time machine rebuilds the past, my memories return.
Like remembering the ashes before they burned.
It is the friction that lights a match,
Desperate attempts that make it last.
So I hold my breath for as long as I can.
But before long, the wind swells in.
I started a fight that I could never win,
But I will hold on as long as I can.
It vanishes against my will,
The light goes out, my heart goes still,
And just like that, I believe in ghosts.
Time and space are at my back
Performing disappearing acts,
Now I can’t escape the smell of smoke.
The research says that the only way to keep memories in tact
Is to lock them away and to close the door until countless years have passed.
I guess that explains why the strangest things can conjure up the past,
And forgotten time will find its long way back.
As thin as air, as light as snow
Some combination of the unknown,
But it doesn’t matter, I just know I need more.
‘Cause I feel like I’ve been sleeping through the better part of this,
Laying dormant through an endless winter that doesn’t even exist.
It’s gravity in an hourglass
Responsible for the avalanche
And the loudest silence that I’ve ever heard.
A memory clear as a bell,
A story I will try to tell
But maybe this time, without words.