Reflective Fragrances

The Beginning…

The scent of enormous things arrives first,
a zeppelin of wandering fog drifting low,
smelling of silver moons crushed into powder.

New York’s skyscrapers give off their own warmth,
exhaling perfume like paper roses
folded by sleepless architects.
Even a vacation’s desert wind carries fragrance,
a slow, ancient musk,
as though dunes are the last animals still dreaming of oceans.
Every vast thing breathes around me,
each aroma a map of all the distances
I once hoped to cross with that someone.

The Middle…

Then the world shrinks to the perfumes of almost‑forgotten tenderness:
a bamboo bar by a patient sea,
where her laughter held the scent of coconut dusk;
a concert field in Manhattan,
violins drifting upward like lavender smoke
toward the high‑rise constellations;
Vermont rain tapped his shoulders
like a former lover returning briefly

to whisper the warmth of wool and cider.

These smaller places bloom again,
fragile, trembling, as if memory itself wanted to kiss my wrist
just one more time.

The Lost Love…

There was the one,
the dream that once walked beside me,
leaving a fragrance I can still feel like a warm hand in ghost-light.
Her scent of storms softening into clarity,
of apricot skin touched by early sun,
of books that had waited lifetimes to be opened.

Love with her was a garden where even shadows blushed,
a place where two hearts were simply mirrors
teaching each other how to bloom.
But time, that wandering thief,
took her essence first,
then her footsteps,
until only the echo of her perfume remained,
fluttering through his chest like petals searching for the flower
they once belonged to.

Finally…

Only this:
a 24‑hour café at 3 a.m.,
the neon sighing in soft pink pulses
like a tired heart that refuses to close entirely.

Before me,
a humble cup‑a‑joe,
steam lifting delicate ribbons of cinnamon and nutmeg.
The scent rises,
tender, hesitant,
a shy confession forming its courage within the dim air.
It brushes my face with the warmth of something
that once loved me fiercely,
a small sweetness choosing, still,
to find me in the hour made of leftover silence.