Hereditary Debt

365 Days of Creativity

day one hundred and seventeen

It's funny, they say that scent is the strongest sense tied to memory, but it's the seeing of other people that most reminds me of you. How different you were from everyone else. And -very rarely- I see a similarity. Like today, I met a man that had your mouth, crooked and broken. Gone too hungry too many times to ever leave leftovers on its plate again.

When we kissed I could taste the coffee on his tongue, and knew that he took it like you had, with too much sugar because that was free. A coffee shop favor, sweet charity.

"Dance with me?" He asked.

But I couldn't, because he wouldn't move like you had, and if we did dance, he would stop reminding me of you.

So we talked for a while, and I watched his mouth. It moved like yours. Parting just a bit. Not much to say, and not saying much when it did. I remember, I used to love you like this.

"A soft spoken monster", you called yourself. But you were my Arcadia. The heaven I never thought I could get into.

I still wear your shirt, not sure if I can actually feel you, or am just imagining your skin woven through the fabric.

The tag on it reads;

50% Cotton
30% Polyester
15% Nostalgia
4% Regret
and 1% ....

What is that last one percent? What is the thing that completes the shirt (and by shirt I mean me)?

People always want to touch the pretty things they see, and debt comes hereditarily to me.

Back then, I knew you were yours. Not mine, not theirs, and only fleetingly would I have the chance to take your poverty away.

I scraped off your barnacles while I could. You, so distant, barely noticed when your leeches became mine; your greedy black monkey, now attached to my spine.

I grew heavy with weight, but had a new, impossible, impervious 1%. I had found it in your lips, your mouth, your kiss.

So, the morning you told me, 'I have to go.'
I made too-sweet coffee and said, 'I know.'

And it's funny I guess, in a sort of sad way, that scent is the strongest sense tied to memory. Because try as I might, every. damn. night.
I really, can't think what you smelled like.