Smells: No Restraint Poem by Lisa Flores

And everything has a scent… When he lies, he exhales words covered by the faint scent of long dead forget-me-nots forgotten. My promises are prismatically pretty yet reek in undertone like a collacine of maggots mindlessly chewing through rotting matter and when they whisper, 'I love you…' in that way, their words cover you like mustard gas; blistering. Scent tethers tightly and to dismiss 'Skin Musk' and baby powder is to dismiss her. To feel true fear is to smell Marlboro smoke and stale beer as he gruffly states, 'No one will believe you..' The deep winter snowstorm, quietly violent, is the fragrance of all-encapsulating heartbreak. Disappointment has an odor so heavy that it hangs within all bonds, inevitable, immobile… perpetual. Happiness smells bitterly sour like the taste of clovers, jealousy green, and holding hands with love is the rusty effluvium of blood. Existence, as a whole, is covered in the unremarkable smell that accompanies a thick stratum of dust; musty and insignificant. And death- the end and the beginning… From death emanates the sweet aroma of tulips as they smile with razor sharp teeth.