Green Halo

The first breath is so cold it feels like a dare.

She opens the window before the kettle boils, and the garden comes in first. Spearmint, crushed underfoot on the path, sharp and green and cold enough to make her eyes water: not the sugary mint of sweets but the leaf itself, sap still on the fingers. She slices a mandarin at the counter and the room changes temperature. Juice, zest, that brief burst of oil when the peel breaks, softening the mint into something almost edible, almost sunny. Later, walking, the fragrance has settled into the collar of her coat. The mint is a memory now, the citrus a glow, and what remains is musk: clean, faintly powdery, warm from the skin, the kind of scent that makes a stranger on the train wonder whether it is her or the morning itself. She does not turn around. She lets them wonder.