I'm sitting outside.  
The air smells like old dreams
like wet soil and cracked pavement after a storm,  
like rustling leaves that once sounded  
like lullabies  
before I even knew what pain was.

It smells like the quiet corners of childhood  
I used to hide in,  
where sunlight poured through tree branches  
like stained glass,  
and the world  
just for a moment
felt safe.

It smells like the day I first realized  
I didn’t need to be anything  
to be loved.  
Not smart,  
not strong,  
not impressive.  
Just… here.

Back then, I belonged to the wind,  
to the soft hum of bees in the distance,  
to the ants weaving stories through grass blades.  
I didn’t have to earn my place.  
No one was counting.  
I was alive
and that was the miracle.

Now I understand why it felt like home.  
Nature doesn’t ask for reasons.  
It doesn’t assign value.  
It just is
and in its presence,  
so was I.

I think happiness lives there,  
in the child I buried under performance.  
The one who laughed  
just because the clouds were shaped like animals,  
who believed puddles could be oceans,  
who never asked  
“Am I enough?”
because enoughness had not yet been sold.

That child still lives in me,  
beneath the weight of doing and proving,  
beneath all the names I gave myself  
just to be loved.

Maybe the secret is to find him again
to sit in stillness,  
and let the world fall away  
until all that’s left  
is the sound of leaves,  
the smell of sky,  
and the feeling  
of being alive without permission.

He’s still there,  
quiet,  
waiting,  
barefoot in the grass.

And the wind hasn’t forgotten him.