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Straight Talk From A Bad Smell

I’m never going away

Sharmila Shankarkumar
Badform
Published in
2 min readJul 7, 2022

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Photo by OSPAN ALI on Unsplash

Hi, I’m Alex and I’m a bad smell.

I’ve been smelling this way for ten thousand years, three hundred and forty six days, 2 hours, 10 minutes and 3 seconds.

Which smell am I?

Yeah, I know there’s a bunch of us. So many just classified under body odors. Under arms. Morning mouths. Nether parts. Generalized malodors. Toes that have been in soggy socks.

You love your pet but they smell. Dogs. Wet dogs. Cat breath. Need I say more?

Garbage and sewage, of course, old pals, totally different fragrance family. But always reliably noisome. Gosh, I could go on all day. Love to reminisce.

But the one I am? I’m the one that you get when you forget a container of cashew yogurt in the fridge for too long, open it up, and find it’s gone green. Mucor circinelloides. That’s what my mother calls me. But you recoil. Because I hit you with my rank fungal odor.

Is it all coming back to you now? What happened last night?

So yeah, I’m not around all that often. It’s only when you forget things. That’s when I stop by. To remind you. Of laughter and forgetting. Doves that cry. And fungi.

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Sharmila Shankarkumar
Badform

Writer living in New York. Published in McSweeneys, Slackjaw, and Points In Case. Winner of writing contests you've never heard of.