To smell, feel, see, hear

I move back in time to predict what I want in the future.

I feel steps taken off of an international flight that doubled as a vortex in time, making me question if I had been sitting for eight minutes or eight hours.

I smell New Delhi and feel the surge of a taxi as its Sikh driver navigates out of a city of beauty, chaos, and suffering.

I feel hot air and sleep streaming in cracked windows, and distance passed with each axil rating thud of a pothole.

I see places and faces and situations that I never would have known existed if I did not leave the safety of a developed world.

I hear fear finding its bearings in the back of my mind and then I look in at and remember this what living feels like.

I touch my throat in the way I always do when I am nervous and find a heartbeat there. I find me there and the culmination of a life turned right side up.