I noticed how you smelled,
Sweet
And vaguely familiar,
But I couldn’t name your scent
Because it was incomplete –
Tainted with the smell of spit
And Flesh.
I know how I smell,
At least for this moment I do.
I smell like a dog,
Or perhaps a horse
Drenched in sky,
My skin turned inside out.
Earlier today
I was running under the sky,
The sky that was blue and open.
The grass stroked my bare legs
And when I flopped down on the ground,
After running for miles across the field
My mouth open to the wind
Open to the sky,
Open in joy,
The sun baked my skin red
And dried the sweat
That had covered my body.
You can smell me,
I know you can.
How could you not?
Even I can smell
The field
And the grass
And the sky still clinging to my skin –
And too,
The sweat.
But you don’t mention it
Because instead of smelling me
You’re looking at me,
Drinking me in through your eyes
And not your nose.
And then later,
Drinking me in through your mouth
With your tongue,
And through your hands,
With the white pressure in your fingertips.
I’m not trying to stop you.
My mouth
My tongue
My hands
Are touching you too.
Later, after you throw me a towel,
You hop in the shower,
And while I wait
I sit on the edge of your bed
Talking to your dog
Who’s come and laid down beside me.
“What do you think?”
I ask.
She lays her head on her paws.
“I like you better than him,” I whisper to her.
“But don’t tell him” I warn.
She never does.
When I leave
And you shut the door behind me,
It’s quiet.
I drive away with the windows down
So that the warm air can wash my face.
I smell honeysuckle on the breeze
And the scent jolts through my mind.
I realize that
Without the spit and the flesh and the sweat,
Without the scent of my body colliding into yours,
Without the eyes and the mouths and hands –
You would have smelled like honeysuckle.
If you reach out your hands
Or your eyes to try and find me again,
You won’t.
But when the scent of honeysuckle
Swimming along through the air,
Carried gently by a hot summer wind
That whispers through a blue night
Reaches my searching nostrils –
Open –
And heaves its way into my mind,
I’ll remember you.
Harris Stevens is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina. He enjoys biking around the sidewalks and trails of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he currently resides.