Patchouli and Lavendar

She was lost. She stood like a cat ready to dash at a crash. A cigarette pressed between her fingers tightly. Her eyes raced, left then right, her head never moving, like a child in search of its mother. Her aura dripped of desperation. Loss and fear. My heart ached for her, I was her and she was me. Even from this distance, I knew she’d smell of patchouli, weed, and lavender. Her breath would hint of cigarettes and sweetened vodka. She’d carry candies in her pockets. They’d taste like summer and youth. A sepia toned crochet shawl slumped around her shoulders, her cotton patched skirt draped loosely to kiss her dusty toes. She was all the colors of the rainbow, if they were dull, and yellowed by time. I had never met her, yet I would have recognized her anywhere. I never even learned her name. “Sweetheart, can I give you a ride?” I begged. The anxiety lifted from her features and she clung to me. “How did you know,” she whispered. “I just knew. Come on, hop in.” We sat apart at the burial. She was his friend but it seemed more than that. A connectedness to a soul, now lost. We joked and laughed and smiled together. We shared in our grief, love, and it bloomed between us in that connectedness. As she was leaving, she hesitated. She placed a feather on my thigh. Blue at the edges, with grey and streaks of black like storm clouds rolling in across a clear blue sky. “It landed at my feet as they placed him into the ground. I think it belongs to you.” He was laid to rest beside his father. My grandfather. “How did you know?” I whimpered. Tears trying desperately to escape and a hard knot in my throat. “How did you know he sends me birds?” She smiled sweetly, head tilted slightly and tears rising like waves, “I just knew.” And then she was gone. She stumbled into my life when I was lost. Leaving an imprint on my soul that at once connected me to my humanity. When my grief was the deepest of oceans. She brought me comfort. I loved her.