Perfume

-Anshudha Garimella

I always thought the easiest way to reminisce was to spray some perfume

It takes me back to that summer faster than my memories do

And with one spritz of that sparkling essence

I can see it all again.

It’s a song liquified into a bottle

the perfect refrain

A melody of perfect notes in harmony

It still echoes in my memories.

I can remember the sea when I wear it on my neck

the fresh breeze of the Mediterranean.

It has a whiff of salt, of bergamot,

I remember it so clearly- that summer

collecting seashells to listen to the song of the waves inside them.

As I sit here reminiscing of a summer that will never return,

Just like that summer the top notes fade,

and I’m left in the afternoon basking in the memories of the hot sun

the bergamot and neroli have faded with that memory but jasmine

lingers…

I’m in the middle of a song, it takes me further back to other summers

I thought I had forgotten

It takes me back to afternoons far away tucked away in the corner of my childhood,

that scent always put me to sleep

and I used to slip into my reveries

With its effervescent notes

those notes are like a lullaby

they always have been, as the heady jasmine

takes over and embraces my mind

I have slept so soundly in that warmth each time

Wrapped up in the sheets

living in my dreams

the scent lingers- the middle notes laced with the memories

of afternoons spent in reveries

..but like any flower in the fall, that dream withers. What can I do to stall?

nothing much, nothing at all.

The setting sun takes away that song.

The warmth of that afternoon is now just a memory

laced with its sensory

effects that wash over me.

And soon enough it fades, but the base notes of white musk linger on my skin

and creates another feeling within.

This will fade too, but for now all the notes are in accord

with each other, creating a perfect picture

of a now faded summer, that I can only sense in the drops of that perfume.

I spray it and wait for the summer to return

New memories waiting to be made

new notes taking their place

to syncopate

in this everlasting melody

a new summer day is waiting to be laced with a new scenery

carrying the scent of a new story.

-AG

P.S. the specific perfume I’m describing is CHANEL N°5 L’EAU.