Apples
Someone who needs to tape a bright green Post-it note with the word “Think!” written on it (in bright blue gel ink) to her computer monitor does not deserve a job. The girl thought this as she placed the note on the bottom left corner of her screen, dangling off at a diagonal, on the verge of falling off, but just hanging on. Only just.
She fanned through the Post-it note pad with her thumb, blowing the papery smell into her face, again. She did this with every book, notebook, notepad, anything she could. It came to the point where the smell of a book could conjure up a memory of another text, one she had long forgotten about. Most of the time, it just created a certain feeling, something a book made her feel. She could almost never place the smell to a particular title. Not that it seemed to matter–or did it? Would it be better if she could place every smell and sensation to a title? Would it make her smelling compulsion less weird, more like an exact science? What makes a compulsion excusable?
She thumbed the acid green paper again. She’d been doing this for so long, she was beginning to smell apples.
Think, she read, think, think, think. She shouldn’t need to remind herself to think.
