The Invitation

There are day’s when I’m visited by some phantom scent, a specter

looming between the distance of what separates me and the purlieu’s of

nowhere,

I don’t recognize where and why the scent is called up from, but it

reasons

to cling onto me, just as thoughts cling onto the periphery of a memory

in denial

The scent fades, into memories holding on to life tenaciously

The scent wills me to breathe it, so that it isn’t buried under the

malodorous scent of the burning libraries of Alexandria,

smoking mirrors, the scent becoming an ancient text indecipherable

It is a scent I recognize from some aphotic zone in my memories

depository

The scent cadences, frolicking around memories, each memory wearing

it according to its character, blending it with its own aged oiled

pheromones

The olfactory organs overpowered by the base of the scent, evaporating

it into something melancholy in its invasive nature

The invasion of my privacy the scent seeks to enshrine itself — in its subtlety

The scent tickles my memory, of a kerchief starched, it lingers in my

nares,

pressed into its fibers by my recollections will to immortalize it in the

fingerprints of my senses — alert

This scent, as a sprite wickedly teases, I’ll never quite grasp its origin

again

But I know, without knowing it is the scent of home

The scent of home, that my scent now invades ambitiously crowding the

visitor to the shadows — for supremacy,

The scent I recognize has trellised the foundations of this home

I devote to it a cornered altar, I incense your perfume with mine

I want to keep this scent safe, defend it from its own fading — behind

the candles waning glow

The memory still lingers here, the scent lackadaisical, sadly it wanders

away,

a passing reminder to wear the scent as a guest of honour,

Without knowledge I know this,

I know, because the scent idles on a prayer,

it was once sent an invitation.

Copyright ©. R Tsambounieri Talarantas. June 2019. All Rights Reserved.