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.