Scent

 (c) 8/7/2021

I want to summon your scent the way

I summon a facsimile of your smile.

         Those crooked teeth in your wide mouth

and you leaning against your first muscle car,

then again as you rise in the pool

the water mirroring beams.

The mole on your shoulder.

Your impossible phrasing as though you couldn’t decide

what the next word could or should be.

Maybe my name was the only word I heard

un-stuttered and precise

because I needed it heard with tenderness.

But your scent. I recall it as delicious

nothing about it dangerous or toxic.

No matter how often I drew it in,

languished in it, it is now lost, un-triggering

unlike the childhood smells of rain

or freshly mown grass, the lilac bush next door

and the driveway hot tar poured.

If only I had known you then.