“If you use perfume, you should have…One to use when you are with your lover. Both of you should like it. It is your signature he remembers you by.”

                                                                        -“The Ethics of Perfume,” mindprod.com

With Andrew I smelled like an ocean

vacation, with sand-caked legs and salt-caked

hair, inhaling the morning mist rising from

the sea water. Even in winter, I was summer

in a white bikini, sucking the juice from a ripe

green apple on a beach in Italy.

Just a year earlier I had been a vanilla cigar

cloaked in musk, a feminine variety of sultry

sandalwood with a trace of sweetness that

reflected itself in my freckles. Kyle must

have thought I was mysterious, the kind

of girl who slept on a velvet pillow,

a peppery confidence he could smell on my neck.

Later though, Joe knew a grown-up version:

an organic spice, a creamy white flower planted

in a dimly lit room. A silk gown reclined

in a studded leather chair with bare feet and long,

golden earrings and fiery red nail polish.

The kind of woman that kisses your neck

and bites you—just a little—before turning

away; a woman who wears chocolate

diamonds wherever she goes.

Photo by Crazy House Capers on flickr

© 2012 Susan Elliott. All rights reserved.