The Scent of Orange Blossoms by Diana Kohut

It was a quiet Tuesday afternoon

when Anna decided to take a different route home from class. The spring sun filtered softly through the budding trees along the old residential street. She walked slowly, her backpack weighing slightly on one shoulder, the familiar ache of a long day settling in her calves. She wasn’t in a rush. Exams were coming, but for once, the pressure felt distant—like background music she could turn down if she chose. As she passed an iron-wrought fence wrapped in climbing ivy, a gentle breeze carried a subtle, sweet scent to her nose—orange blossoms.

She stopped walking. The scent wasn’t strong, but it was unmistakable. Sweet, floral, slightly citrusy. It caught her off guard, tugging her attention inward before she could resist. Her breath caught, and in the blink of an eye, she was no longer on a quiet street in her college town. She was sixteen again, standing in the courtyard of her grandmother’s house in southern Spain.

The late afternoon sun was warmer there, golden and sticky. Bees hummed lazily around the orange trees, heavy with blossoms. Her grandmother, abuela Carmen, wore her wide straw hat and snipped away at herbs in her tiny garden. The air was thick with the scent of orange blossoms—like today, but stronger, more alive. Anna remembered how they used to sit on the terrace, drinking chilled horchata, her abuela’s rough hands always in motion—knitting, sorting olives, or gently brushing the hair from Anna’s face.

“Una flor para una flor,” her grandmother had said, once placing a single blossom behind Anna’s ear.

That summer had been the last one before her grandmother fell ill. The last time Anna had felt completely untouched by the complications of life—no university deadlines, no financial stress, no vague anxieties about who she was becoming. Just heat, scent, and the comforting rhythm of her grandmother’s presence.

A car honked in the distance, snapping her back to the present. Anna blinked and looked around, momentarily disoriented. The breeze had died down, and the scent had faded. She looked at the tree overhead—just some ornamental bush with tiny white flowers, likely planted by the city without much thought. Her chest felt tight in a way she couldn’t immediately explain. It wasn’t sadness, not exactly. More like a quiet ache. A memory wrapped in sunlight and the bittersweet certainty that time never waits. 

She continued walking, this time slower, letting the warmth of the afternoon settle into her skin. The flashback clung to her, like the faint residue of perfume after someone’s left the room. She thought of calling her mother, just to hear a familiar voice. Maybe later, she told herself. And as the sidewalk stretched ahead, uneven and cracked, Anna carried the scent with her, tucked away in a corner of her mind she hadn’t touched in years.