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The scent on my wrist means my husband’s making perfume again; a euphemism for nothing—he spends days hunched over bottles, inhaling molecules of skin, searching for a whiff of wanton. At dinner parties, he wafts eloquent on theories of scent: Turin’s waves, Pauling’s shapes. Amoore claimed seven odors only, most having to do with sex: fish, sweat, musk, sperm. Our dog smells a million things, detects deceit on a single sigh. My husband’s nose covets hundreds, each odor unique. My senses, wavering, notice nothing. Neither lipstick nor clean collar. To me, the world is not made of scents, but shape and color. He is dark trapezoid. Me, an hourglass with open legs. She, an alabaster violin whose strings I tweaked. How could I have thought he would not sniff her out? I want to be the mistress of perfume. No, empress. Under my rule, the scent-as-shape theory would hold true, pale bodies fit together to complete and release, as easy as key into lock. You could detect scent’s shape with your fingers: All affairs would smell three-sided, perfume vials made of crystal would never shatter. Shanna Germain has collected rejections from a wide range of anthologies, websites and publishers. When she's not making paper mache lions from her "thanks but no thanks" letters, she writes. Her award-winning poems, essays, short stories and novellas can be found in places like Absinthe Literary Review, Best American Erotica, Blood Fruit: Queer Horror, Eclectica, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, Juked, Salon and more. Visit her at http://yearofthebooks.wordpress.com/ next table of contents |
