The way home smelled like flowers swimming in puddles, seeming like waterlilies that could fit in the palm of my hand. Musty, damp, yet it traveled lightly in my lungs. Many thoughts broke my mind apart in various ways — ways unimaginable and unwanted, ways resembling the becoming of wars. Imposing, territorial, and unreasonably burdensome. The way home smelled like the rain, and the wind was palming my closed eyes, brushing against soft eyelashes and longing skin.
My skin was etched with a need as loud as the way raindrops shatter on concrete grounds. It was lovingly visible even with squinted or uninterested eyes. The loneliness dangling on the skin that craved a touch so familiar by a specific pair of tough yet gentle hands. The loneliness that grew with the distance stretched by not seeing each other today. I miss him, I miss him, I miss him.
Is it possible to miss someone this much?
Is it okay to miss someone this much?
Even with the scent of the evening air hanging on busy streets, still, that faint, almost unnoticeable smell made me turn and follow the direction it ran to. And I stood there, stayed, and wondered why your scent was here but you weren’t. I inhaled the scent that took home’s form, and I knew he wasn’t anywhere near me because even a sight as blurry as mine would never miss recognizing a visage as tender as his.
Albeit I cannot quite describe it in careful detail, his scent was like a garden of all my favorite flowers — the mixture of his perfume wrapping him, and a tinge of something I just cannot pinpoint, maybe it’s his fabric conditioner? Or that’s just what he smells like — whatever it was, although I may never know what it exactly is, I know one thing and it’s what I’ll never tell him: I take a deeper breath when I lean in his neck.
This scent of his traced the city covered with heavy clouds, and in an instant, buckled my knees with appetency. I want to kiss him and caress his face and mumble wishes through his hair.
The smell of his perfume, and his shampoo, and the fabric conditioner he must use so often — I inhaled them ever so quietly, afeared that he might notice it. Because I want to remember what he smells like and smell like him. I want to be the only one to recognize this scent as uniquely his. This is his scent and it will make me stop and turn every time. This is his scent and I want to be the only one to sense it when I enter a room he just left.
I already knew what his scent was a mixture of, but to find it on my way home, on a road he does not always walk on, with many, many people passing by me, his scent lingered with the after-rain smell. Tonight, as silently as I hummed on my way home, it was the after-rain wind and his petrichor smell. I want to familiarize every little thing that makes his scent his very own — the way it melts my heart into a new shape that can fit in his ribcage, the way it makes me purse my lips and make me smile, and the way it rocks me to sleep unlike any mellow.
For a little bit more, I hope my neighbors do not notice me walking a bit slower than I usually do (because this little time is all I have, it hurts, but this moment shall be my secret) just so I can smell that scent a tad bit longer as it is the only thing that can softly hold my heart and mind together. I hope the rain allows me to love and miss you so pathetically in this still moment.
I hope it is okay to love you this fervently.
