Faded Paint

It was gone as fast as it came. A flash. Four days ago. One minute I was my 50 year old self, fighting the downhill momentum of age, pedaling my 21 speed road bike, and a second later I was flying carefree on my red BMX pedal bike down my childhood street. Smiling, hair flying, with all the recklessness a boy of 10 has on a bicycle. The world held no limits. I felt it, it was real. I don’t know what it was that transported me for that one unexpected second in time. Something like this has happened to me before, a flash memory comes back, ephemeral. But never this tangible and vivid. I feel it truly happened for a second.  Maybe it was a smell. I was near an asphalt factory that has been there since I was a kid where they still fill huge noisy trucks with steaming loads of black asphalt, the rich sooty smell of hot tar sharp in your nostrils. The smell is distinct. But I smell it most days riding past here.  Maybe it was the angle of the morning sun flashing in my eyes through holes bet