A scent comes back to me. The last safe love
I knew smelled of pinon nuts, a winter
in New Mexico. Brine from an olive
still scares me. A bastard of a lover
ruined cloves and made the hint of Old Spice
into fear. A boy I loved in fishnet
stockings knew how to make plums smell like vice.
I have forgotten names. I don’t forget
the musk you once used to mask your true scent.
There’s no hiding from that. But memories
of scents are either sad joys or hell-bent
dread and nothing else … nothing that can please.
How odd that the one who loved me the most
turned this mild whiff into a vengeful ghost.