Eau de You

I haven’t thought about you in awhile
But

You know how they say olfactory memories are the strongest,
Stirring something inside us that we haven’t dared to breathe in,
In what seems to be the longest time.

Then for a second,

I smelled us.

Not the us of today, foul with unfamiliarity.
But the us of snowfall and blurry eyes.

I caught the scent of your slept-in bedsheets,

and cold nights and chai lattes and fogged up car windows–
Those fragrances that bounce and echo in the caverns of our noses,
Causing an avalanche of memories
and making reacquaintances.

What a perfume our story would make–
A collection and recollection of aromas.

I’d bottle us up and hide us away

in the furthest reaches of my mind’s top drawer.

Yet
Try as I might to commit your scent to memory,
I can’t seem to get it right.

It dissipates too quickly,
lost to the air of the feelings
that you could only ever imitate,
But never have again
Because how could I ever discover
a scent

as sweet

as your skin mixed with mine.