The Pulse of Air

The smell of dry, sun-baked stone always brings me back to the heat of a summer afternoon, the kind that makes the air shimmer like a held breath. I remember the feeling of sudden, frantic movement against my skin—not a touch, but the rush of displaced air, a thousand tiny heartbeats vibrating in unison. It is a frantic, rhythmic thrumming that settles deep in the marrow of your bones, a sound that is felt in the chest before it is heard by the ears. There is a specific, metallic taste to the dust kicked up by wings, a gritty sweetness that coats the back of the throat when the world decides to take flight all at once. We spend so much of our lives tethered to the ground, heavy with the weight of our own shadows, yet the body remembers the instinct to scatter, to leave the earth behind for the sake of a wider, wilder sky. Does the air remember the shape of us once we have passed through it?

Saumalya Ghosh has captured this exact sensation of release in the image titled Enjoyment of Freedom. The way the air seems to vibrate with life makes me want to stand in the center of that storm and simply breathe. Can you feel the rush of wings against your own skin?