Flaw Salad

It’s a fact, you said. It’s how the world works, you said. You told me in numbers and figures how magic doesn’t exist, and of course, one cannot argue with fact.

I felt lonely for you then. It must be hard to travel the world without friends in the trees, without ghosts on your skin, and I wonder if that’s why you have no smell. I move towards you, I sink into you, and you are like paper, like oats, like sand. You smell like nothing, and you leave nothing behind—not a scent, not a flavor to breathe in.

I worry about dying while I’m still alive, and I think it will feel like odorlessness. It will feel like walking on a grid when, today, I melt between lines and flow among planes, and I soar over boundaries as I dip into depths. I am fluid.

You must branch—no, bifurcate, you said—and how limited the reach of a branch.

You bifurcate across my skin, and your electric touch sends colors racing through my mind. Your lips, so alive, pull me outward. I lose myself in a crescendo of music and memory and beauty and ache, but—

But I cannot smell you, my dear, and I worry about a life without trace.