12.30

[Woah, I fell off the wagon hard. I was writing once a day there for a hot minute. I'll be around. Don't worry your pretty head about me. And if your head is ugly, you're not alone.]

You don't smell anything like me, or anyone else. You're distinctive. Intellectually, I know what makes a person's smell, but there's no poetry in salt and oil. I know there is romance in the smell of it; the memory of you walking by me far too close and tossing your hair. That brief intimacy is all I remember from the day we fell in love, but it's enough. I know, a deep bone-tied knowledge, the ache of that gasp of docks and pine and sea breeze you brought with you from the mountain's toes. It's not a fresh smell, not a clean one, but it's yours. For me, that's good enough.
Smell is so visceral. I wonder--when we're both dead and winter pushes the air out of the forest's lungs and the breath of the sea thrums through our cemetery--will my body shiver when the smell of you rushes over me? If anything can make my rotten corpse breathe again, it would be the smell of you.