scents are responsible for memory coming to life.

tonight i pulled down a box from the top of my closet. but before i could empty old frames to store inside the box, i had to pull out the other boxes that were inside the larger one. nestled inside - never used and forgotten - was a wooden box he had given me. i had probably only touched it three times and opened it once, i am not sure why, but if i had to guess it was because i never have enough luggage space to bring back all i would like to from miami to manhattan. without even unlocking it, the signature scent of him permeated the space i was surrounded by. i sighed within, remembering how prior to giving it to me he had promised it had been soaked in his cologne. it had been. and almost a year and half later, it still breathes his presence. inhaling i am immediately reminded of our intimacy. i had forgotten and i become flush even admitting that. his scent, living within this box that is no larger than one index card and a half, evokes me backwards into a time that was beaded by our being together. a scent that smells of all the nights we got made up together, of hotel rooms from coast to coast, of suitcases brought up multiple staircases, of letting myself fall to sleep on his oxford shirts, of waking early - showering alone - and surprising his still sleeping body with my own in wake reflecting the morning glow. a scent that exists to me not solely because of him but because of us. a scent that signifies and signals the many moments and magnitude of minutes of us living on and in each other.

but i wouldn't live forward with the same scent living on. i wouldn't erase memory, nor would i ask that it had not changed and let me, him, us, the surroundings moment by moment become something new.