Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Poetry Tuesday: Scent Memory

Purple scented gum

In my skin I am a small grey box
of scented gum. I say OPEN HERE
and still you hesitate to open me

and I do not open there. I open
elsewhere.

Along one careful, high-strung edge
I open. Inside I am old incense,
a shop selling velvet dresses, the
cinnamon sticks we chewed. I am in college.
I held your hand and felt protected.

We sat in movies and did not speak;
I borrowed your shirt and you could not wash it
because the smell of me was fine.

So, I'm a little square. I taste perfumed.
The color of me waits patiently.
I can be hard to take.
And then there's softening, and sighs to chew,
and you and I just do not last. We almost never were.
Our time is up. Or things are stickier, at least.

How do I resist rewarding you while becoming everything you wish?

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