Amuse Bouche

Steve Buissinne via Pixabay

It was the smell of bread always baking, the smell of turf-smoke, the smell of onions, of boiling, the green tongue of boiled cabbage, the pink one of bacon with grey scum like sins rising, the smell of rhubarb that grew monstrous at the edge of the dung-heap, the smell of rain in all its iterations… the living smell of wool, the dead smell of stone, the metallic ghost stench of mackerel that disobeyed the laws of nature and like Jesus outlived itself by three days.

from This is Happiness by Niall Williams (2019). Very Highly Recommended.