A prompt from deepwildcoaching:
“What memories linger in the scents we carry?
Remember a familiar scent. What person, place, or moment did it awaken?”
i: lessons in baking
Like a dusty road
unwinding
in front of me,
the scent of slightly burning
sesame seeds curls underneath my nostrils.
A memory unlocks
quietly.
First,
the memory
of you
at the stove,
nimble hands
moving the dials
and the way you
were like a bird
quick, quick, quick
fluttering around a kitchen
designed for the 1960s.
Next, you never told me recipes
or exact amounts of anything.
A dash of this,
a sprinkle of that.
“You taste it,” you told me,
“that’s how you know.”
And then, you would move
to the bowls.
The yellow-green bowls
my mother now uses to mix
salads.
And you would use
your soft, your Jergens soft
hands to mix the dough,
and form fingers.
They were to become cookies,
and then, sprinkle them
with the sesame seeds.
Not too many, not too little.
“You’ll know,” you reminded me.
Baking isn’t a science
as much as everyone says,
it’s an art.
It’s a love.
But even in love, even in art,
there are rules,
there are boundaries.
A little bit here,
a little bit there.
Finally, you tried to teach me,
but I was so young
and so naïve.
I didn’t belong in a kitchen,
and I wasn’t learning
the lessons you were
imparting.
ii: the softspun scent of patchouli & somewhere home
I never stopped
to consider what home is
when I was surviving.
Life is too chaotic
to slow down
when you’re fighting
an arsonist’s
wild, beautiful destruction,
a hypnotist’s
elaborate, tantalizing lies.
Yet I somehow found
the syrup slow of love
in your embrace,
and though you are not gone,
nor are you a memory
like a song half-remembered,
your scent does bring me
back
to a slow dance
in the autumn,
the hum of you
in my ear like yesterday.
I don’t even know
if it is patchouli —
heavy and dark —
or citrus —
cloying and bright–
or something completely
different and foreign,
but I keep the thought of you
close,
inked on me
like love letters scripted
on bone.
And as the ricochet of love
quiets my demons,
I know this.
Love is not determined by
a scent,
and home is not dictated by a place.
Love is you.
Home is you.
iii: you called it something cute, but we all know…
The scent drives them away.
A repellent.
I had a lover tell me
I smell of cinnamon,
of bon fires,
of the month of October,
but autumn most of all.
And now, I roll on a perfume
that has a clever name
and notes of bergamot
and jasmine,
of melon and amber,
vanilla and sandalwood.
To me, I smell rich and luxurious.
Like the color burgundy.
Velvet hues.
But men I know,
turn up their noses.
They’d rather smell something
light and harmless.
And maybe that’s the point.
Note: I meant to write about the dead, the memories, but there are too many dead who are buried with the scent of dirt as their final memory, and they deserve more. So, I’m honoring the living now, and perhaps, as the grieving pulls the gauze from my throat, I can speak of the dead I remember. “lessons in baking” is dedicated to Josephine as I remember her. But the rest — still live in my heart and somewhere between the stanza breaks and here.