I can’t breathe through my nose anymore.

Is it stuffed up, or just damaged beyond repair?

It’s hard to say.

But I can smell with my mouth

and my eyes, with my memory of blue skies

and yellow cheerfully yellow daisies.



I know in my tippy toes

what scent fresh raspberries carry

above their bowl – it bowls me over still.

It is an odor of promise, of effort spent

in bending low and plucking,

of bees fucking,

of ruby jewels tucked away

and playing CUCKOO! with prying eyes

and protective leaves.



I forever know the wafts of roses

climbing my mother’s walls,

petals falling down and my soul lifting,

soaring up past the roof, POOF,

I am up there, even now,

resting, loafing on a cloud,

a perfect bed of perfume,

mom at her loom, dad who knows where,

I didn’t care.



So here I am, head jammed

between explosions of yellow and more yellow.

Who needs, what do they call it,

an offsetting color?

Ha! Yellow does it all, the petals

curl and unfurl, anchored at the center, yes,

but each one with a mind of its own.

And I KNOW what it smells like,

what it wants to be,

how it touches air,

how it pulls up water

to feed its shock of hair.



Sometimes I stick my nose

such as it is

deep into the blossom’s center.

I ask if I may enter,

I won’t stay long, won’t prolong

this ecstatsy, this face embrace,

the touch on my cheeks

that reeks of kindness

and pleasure

and acceptance.







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