Wilted Jasmine

Sauvanne Margaux

She smelled of cleaned sheets and wilted jasmine. 

All the while, she thought about the rush of youth. The burdening desire to grow up, but to remain youthful. She remembered the sensation quite clearly. It was like a rock that was lodged in her stomach. Sometimes when the sensation was even stronger, she felt it in her throat. It made it difficult for her to breath. Every exhale would come out hollow and pained.

 She remembered always being so confused as to why she felt this way. 

Why she was confused about being confused. Some days, nothing made sense. Others, her brain felt like a fountain of knowledge. Thoughts filled with wisdom would flow continuously out of her mind. These days pleased her most. 

She enjoyed the sensation of knowing more than she was meant to. 

It felt like she was consistently in on some kind of joke most people did not understand. Life often felt like a joke to her. There were moments where she found it to be laughable. Like all those drunken stupors spent alongside strangers. Teenagers who were drinking their worries away, without realizing they had none yet. She would always vow herself to never do that again, to never get so drunk she would make a fool of herself beside other fools who didn't even care. 

She came to the conclusion that she truly was no better than anyone else her age. 

This is when the fountain of knowledge began to fade into a trickle and the stone found at the bottom of it got stuck again. It was felt like a reminder that the greatest feelings will always pass. Especially when you least want them to. This is what makes them so great. They are surrounded by placid or downright nauseating ones. There were times where the pain of the stone got to be too much. 

She had to move to breath again, to will her lungs back into motion.

 So she would run. She would fly out her front door, and head straight for the park. Her strides were inexplicably strong. Otherwise, she was never fast. But in these moments it felt like the only way to feel alive. Running so fast every thing around her was an absolute blur. Her mind thus became a blur. No room for unwanted thoughts, which so often accompanied the low trickle following her knowledgable days. There was only motion, colour, and air, sweet crisp air. On winter days it burned her throat, as though she had just sucked a mint before inhaling. 

She enjoyed the sharp pang , because it was an introduction to a different kind of pain. 

After these sprints she often felt so exhausted she would collapse and fall into a most satisfying sleep. 

In the morning the rock would be a little less stuck, and a few days later it would altogether recede into a small featherlike pebble. Only offering her a tickle once in a while as a reminder, that it still had some control over her. 

The tickle made her laugh.