NaPoWriMo Day #16

Today's prompt was to remember smells. I have always thought that smells really brought back memories, and Read Write Poem's prompt today talks about that. This was probably my favorite prompt yet. Probably because I have so many smell memories.

Here's my attempt:

Fried Rice



I remember the garlic air
drifting in every corner
and out the screened, barred windows
to me.
I biked toward the scent.
The scrape of the metal spoon
clanking against the wok
lured me back for dinner
with its music of stir-fry.


Ten years later,
eight thousand miles away,
the same garlic-layered symphony
woke me in an airport,
haunting me with its rice


for a wafting second
I smelled home.

by Marcie Flinchum Atkins
April 16, 2010