What you smell like

Somehow we always end up on the floor, tangled in blankets, and each other's arms.

Your hair is messy.

I shaved my head, but if I didn't it would be messy too.

In this comfortable contortion you ask 'what do I smell like?'

For an instant my man nature takes over and I almost say 'Chicken,......'because that's what we had for dinner.

But your eyes tell me you want something poetic, a simile, some synesthesia or sonnet telling you

That

You smell like the moment rain first begins to fall.

Off beat

as it decorates the sidewalk with

polka dots.

OR

The last day of school

OR

When from your backyard you hear the faint familiar jingle of the ice cream truck,

not sure if it's coming or going you panic

realizing you're a dime short to get the popsicle

shaped like a shark

But remembering your friend owes you, you take off running down the side walk barefoot

carefully

because it's hot

hoping he's heard the truck too.

My mind races to find something creative, something so amazing that even after I leave she'll muse over the beauty of that metaphor for days. I could see her in my mind at the flower shop she works at, telling her co-workers while she blankly re-arranges a perfect bouquet of roses 'He said I smell like...." And she'd sigh, and all the girls in the flower shop would sigh and say something about how she's so lucky and how their husbands used to be like that, and how they're not and how they wish they were.

But all that came out was 'Fall leaves'

"You smell like fall leaves"

By the expression on her face I might as well have said deranged, miscolored, rotting foliage.

"You smell like deranged, miscolored, rotting foliage."

I sink back into the pile of human and fabric

defeated.

But the truth is

you did kinda smell

like

chicken,

a little fowl.

-BLC