Your Scent

You wore the scent of maple leaves crushed under foot in the warm, dusty autumn afternoons. It wasn't a cologne or aftershave, it was your scent...who you were. I smelled it the first time I met you and it clung to me, haunting me as much as your eyes looked into my dreams....told me you were the one. I knew you instinctively through a scent I knew would identify you. I had known it for decades, searched and almost gave up and then suddenly found it in you.

It was the smell of pleasure and something deep, smoldering slowly and spirling up and around me. It calmed me and at the same time made me hunger for that undercurrent that swam below the surface of your voice. I breathed it in as if I were drinking life itself...I could never get enough of you!

Tearing through our closet, I screamed....howled through tears and terror at the scent of you gone. Clothes still hanging, dresser drawer full...I cursed myself for washing the clothes the day before you...oh , OH CHRIST!

My daughter-in-law came in. I whimpered..."I can't smell him!" panic moved on to devastation and I sat down in a messy heap, sobbing hysterically. I found one worn tee shirt, folded it and put it in a zip lock bag to make sure I had the scent somewhere safe for later. Virginia moved me out of the closet and quietly shut the door.

It comes to me at times in odd places...suddenly wafting around me in the open breeze of the rental car last weekend as we crossed the desert going home. No earthly explaination...just suddenly there and gone...caressing me lightly in the afternoon heat. Faint traces at the table last night as you were standing there..unseen...watching me...waiting for an invitation...unnecessary as you unlocked my heart years ago, moved in and never left.

Candles burn for you..lighting your way home and to my heart. I know you are always there by your scent...the scent of maple leaves in autumn...mingled slightly with the smell of a cigerette freshly smoked when no one else is there.

It was difficult to collect the thoughts I wanted to write. Difficult because me heart bleeds with it everytime I try. Raw and open and still bleeding....my blood flows into pools painting pictures of things from the past...a magic mirror changing and shifting in the tidal waves.

I think I have found it, again.

The words flowing and pounding against me, out of me, mouth open with the taste of seaweed and salt on my tongue....screaming with the voice of an albatross causht in the wind and suddenly being pulled upwards on the drafts

I am bound to this place as surely as if I were anchored in the rocks...waited down with chains of my own making that slowly turn to rust welding themselves to my bones.

Collecting pieces of the pictures in my head along with sand dollars and pebbles that will go into a jar on my side board in the desert. I long for the sea and the City. Long to see the ghosts shifting through time on the streets before me, before the shops and houses I walked on years before and walk on now.

I cling to the small bits of glass, stone and shells like a rosary to spell over and over...a lifeline to who and what I was and most surprisingly, still am....slowly releasing into what I will become and where we will be again. I am obsessed with it....only admitting it now....as a lover that has run away out of desperation and aching for return. I have run away too many times in my life and now realise I need run no more.

Acceptance is strange and familiar...looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing the child reflected back. My child was curious and bold, unafraid of climbing the dangerous rocks and walking the edge of the Marina walls while my Grandmother screamed out in warning. The sea was always below me and before me....the grand tightrope walk.

I went back to the hotel room that night sick and nerve shattered...wishing silently that I hadn't come this way...it was foolish and silly....throwing up all the years of fear and insecurity....purging my body and soul of the constant running from who and what I have always been....running from my Grandmother's boogie man...the wino in the bushes....running from self-imposed pain and my own reflection. I shed it off me as a skin and looked at it in wonder.

Why?

Habits die hard when you finally cut them down. It writhed and clawed out from within me as my stomach churned and spasmed in pain. A beast within tearing its way out one way or another...everything subsiding once I looked at it and ran my fingers through its fur and called it by my own name. I accepted my beast.

Exausted, but at peace, I fell into sleep next to Tony wrapped in the soft weight of the bedsheets and his scent. I drifted into sleep like a child.

I am going back on my terms....unafraid to climb the stairs and unlock the door of the house on the Marina that has always been mine....but only....only...if I wanted it bad enough.

The child is coming home.

The WInd and the Rain II

And with you comes the rain
the winds and
the waters of the sea

Gentle
always gentle in the moment
tea and thunder
lightning
and the rain
with and
without you
and

always

always the scent
of wet pavement in a Windsor summer
decades ago

powerless against the tide of flooding memories
half forgotten bits
of torn photographs
carried on the waves from the sand
drifting

yes

smells of dust and diesel
wisteria and fallen leaves tangle
in the ocean tang

roar and boom
the gulls call
fallen angels against the fading phantoms
of yesterday's amusements
strings of smoke blow
from a lovers cave
hidden in the rocks
rimmed edge of ruins
laid tretcherous on the wind and rising tide
black with the waves and dark grey against
the sky

the fog horns blare

leaving me alone
and restless
hopeful in the wind and the rain
and always the waters
and that you
will come

Dreaming

Dreaming

Sandalwood scent

and candle wax

swirls in dream wisps

of warm promise

mysteries

enchantments

from times long past

Savoring sherry

and a good book

with the close intimacy

of the evening

Rustling of robes

on cobblestones

I thought I heard...

drawing drowsily awake

with the sudden rush of Autumn winds

whipping the pages

bourne through time

I fly with the leaves

in the deep night

clinging like Summer incense

on everything I touch

just a

faint

scent

as I raise my head

from the book

where I've been sleeping