Smell

Sunday, 4th January 2009.
2:30 p.m
Itwar Bazaar, Clifton.
Karachi.


Loose gravel between my toes.
The smell of paan,hours-old chai, sweat of small pashtun boys,green yellow brown rotting vegetables.
Women haggling over clothes, shoes, cracked precious stones.
Men snarling, swearing, spitting.

Staring.

I trudge behind ammi, clutching my chador with one hand and a zillion blue plastic bags with the other.
Evading eyes, fingers.

Someone with oversized pants and overpriced sunglasses pushes past me.
Before I get a chance to raise my hand to curse him out, I ....
Smell.

His smell.

I couldn’t have frozen faster had someone doused me in sub-zero water and then coated me over with instant cement.

In the middle of that dingy muddy pathway in the deserts of Karachi,
in the grimy heat and nauseating stench,
in the pummels of a heartless throng,
in the air left behind by a mysterious rude stranger,

His smell.

................................

Saturday, 14th December 2008.
4:30 am.
Four Points Sheraton Hotel, Long Island.
New York.


His Smell.
Sweet, without trying over-zealously to be so.

I bury my nose in the little hollow beneath his left ear lobe,
the curve of his jaw line.
I breathe....

..........................

They say smell is the strongest sense linked to memory.

What if smell overcomes memory? What if all memory became nothing,
not even a fragmentary speck of elusive imagination,
but just a nostalgic smell inhabiting the hollows of your mind?

...........................

Breathe.....

Each breath inhales in a little more of him.
Each breath exhales out a little more of me.
With each breath I etch him into my air my blood my soul my being.


Breathe.....
.........until everything I possess; my mind my thoughts my memories

become him.

........................................

Friday, 30th January 2009.
2:30 p.m
Home, Ash Street.
Vancouver.


I rummage mindlessly through my purse, removing boarding pass stubs, gum wrappers, one dried out pen,
a scrunched up draft for a poem, a fading yellow rose petal tucked into one of its many crevices.

I delve deeper to find a crinkled white tissue.
Memory rings.
The tissue envelops crimped leaves, dried flowers....


These are for you’, he says, and hands me a fragrant bouquet. A kaleidoscope of baby pink and white petals, bright red yellow white roses.


Memories.

I am caught in that silent moment of eternity between torn leaf and fading petal.
That moment when eternity itself holds its breath lest
it unleash its own power and scare itself into non-existence.


I hold my breath tight,close my smiling eyes in fondness-
Apprehension.
God, the slightest whiff of this smell can……


Already, I can picture the petals
rising like crimson phoenixes reborn from their own gray ashes...


Petals like fine paintbrushes,poised to repaint the black canvas of my eyelids with the.................

.........gray of the trolley wheels, the silver of his car,the pitch black of his jacket,

the glitter gold of him.

This smell,
His smell..


With barely-contained anticipation,caressing that stiff, delicate tissue paper like frail velvet cheeks,
as if I too, were nothing more than a frail tissue paper...
as if I too were blank, and wanted...needed... to be smoothed, scrawled, written, drawn,
painted
painted
painted
all over again..

i hold my breath.

shatter your iridescent glass phials into me, spill the molten silvers in rivulets, let run the glowing golds....
revive my memory with all the colors of you.

I, I, I, I...

Breathe..

.................................

yes.
cheesy.

bt pst.

this is where the emo ends.
yespleasesorrytobreakyourheart. You can step over the line now.
That post above didnt quite have what i wanted it too.. that feeling of pent up anticipation, and resolution.
ack. must re-write.

Isn't it funny that the smallest whiff of a smell can suddenly through you in a tizzy of emotions,
recreate an entire atmosphere from scratch?
I could almost feel the airport tiles zooming in beneath my feet, my plastic blue bags being replaced by my trolley, the stalls and shoppers vanishing in thin air to be replaced by weary travellers, excited relatives...


Anyhow, more later as i drum up my brain into existence,

-eeda