I can’t smell

It’s fucked up but I’m like that dog in “Lady and the Tramp”. Flowers and farts go unnoticed but I can smell important things
Not that flowers and farts aren’t necessarily important…

I can smell the dead
I can smell how they died or lived
I can smell when I need to stay somewhere or leave
I can smell connection

I’ve straight up fallen in love over the way someone hit my nose. My first crush was the approaching storm and dust being heated in sunbeams on an upright piano.

My first girlfriend bathed in Tommy Girl and Vanilla but under all that was carnival candy apples and black pepper

My ex, the big EX was a box being opened for the first time and for all of his awfulness a type of innocence. I imagine Peter Pan would have the same scent. Together we were coffee.
The expensive shit
Kona
Until it got bad
We became sour, mold and acid. I smelled like burning flesh without the sickly sweet
He never noticed the change

After that I stopped paying attention to my nose

Until last night

I couldn’t stop sniffing the air or touching places I forgot were there. Our hands, our lips sent up our scent like smoke for a prayer.

This aroma is sankofa.

I follow it back to a time when I regarded this body of mine as a sacred wonder and wanted nothing more than mutual worship with an other’s sacred wonder.

Then became now.

Later,
as we floated down a San Francisco street
our fingers twined like legs, a couple walked past us.

One of them turned his head for a moment to look at us. “Ya’ll smell so good!”
His boyfriend agreed.

I think we laughed

I think we said “that’s because we smell like each other”

I think

I don’t know… I don’t remember if the words actually made it out. But I do know they were correct.

We smelled of new earth, a hatching egg, a spark, the first page in a fresh note book, sunrise orange and Lilith making love to herself.

A perfume that should be bottled and labeled “thank god” and “finally”

We smelled like hope
and depending on your demographic
dangerous