The Slow-Cooked Sentence

A scent overwhelmed me. Aaaa — was it dust or — Aaa — pollen? I searched for tissue and found — choo! 

Marcel, my husband, who rolled over and slept sweetly oblivious to the dribbly, snorty, sniffly, snuffly, runny wreck I’d become. A second stab in the dark. Where the hell was the tissue?

At that moment I was watery in the eyes, cotton-y between the ears, itchy in the nose, scratchy in the throat, breathless in the lungs, and irritate to my core from an allergic reaction to — lavender.