PAUL CHRISTENSEN

The air has a certain thin resemblance to the smell of nutshells. I remember holding up a walnut shell to my nose after I ate the nut, and wondering what it smelled like. It reminded me of my grandmother's bedroom, with its highboy dresser, crooked candles, some saints' pictures hanging precariously from the frame of a large mirror, a doily long stained from wax drippings, and a scent of old age, of time that had slowed down as if its batteries were going dead. That smell fas