the scent of cardamom & suddenly i'm walking into a grocery store on broadway & maybe 110th street asking a man with white tufts of hair only on the sides of his head eyes surrounded with shadow circles if he will grind my coffee beans with cardamom pods & he doesn't even pause he's done it so often a secret shared with me by a tunisian professor where i work & i can't get that musky bittersweet flavor out of my mind the powder creeping up my nose like a vine like a cell memory the way it fills the air as he grinds the beans then gets back to refilling shelves with bottles of pomegranate molasses & i am so obsessed with this flavor i ride several subway stops away for my short lunch break to find a place that makes iced cardamom coffee & roti wraps & i stand in the heat of new york streets bare-legged bare-armed devouring this flavor this moment of my early 30s following what my heart buds crave before descending sweaty sandal-footed into the rise of humid air & gathered smells of the subway to return to work to the quiet of a university job in july remembering how my mother & i tried to make a cardamom donut recipe for my london school in seventh grade & unfamiliar with the spice we put whole cardamom pods inside i can still taste the sugar flood of dense dough & then the sudden bitter shock of the hard-to-chew pod can still see my classmates eyes widen & sour leaving unfinished triangles of fried dough on napkins as they reach for other more chocolate-rich affairs