Her

She had the most beautiful neck and décolletage I have ever seen. I have memories that I collected during my youth where I’d observe her. It was as though her pheromones were so potent, they took power over a room. Whatever came out of her mouth felt secondary in wake of the ambiance they lit. I’d watch as she craned her neck when he wanted her attention. She’d never fully submit to him in some moments. She would contort her throat center to mirror the sound of his voice. Her body let him know that she only had a fraction of herself to give.

During the fall of my freshman year of college in Boston, I went into the Le Labo store on Newbury Street. I had hopes of finding a new perfume scent complimentary to the autumn months. I came across one that smelled familiar to me, labeled “Labdanum.” I couldn’t distinguish what it was I liked about it. I just resonated with the way it settled in the air. I couldn’t grasp the scent for longer than I actively breathed it in for. I smelled it over and over again, trying to store a memory of it. The olfactory senses store memories differently. It’s like trying to take a mental picture of a chemical reaction. Only the body can help you recall it because you can’t visualize it’s qualities. You know it’s there once you leave, but it feels illusive to you. You can’t activate the place where you store it.

She escapes him.

Labdanum is specific. Its clean and floral, but earthy in a way that you can’t find anything like it from Sephora. Its’ compounds have no room for impurities. It was almost involuntary of me to pick it up amongst all the other scents on the shelf. What smelled like her invited me in. Afterall, I am in the world as a part of her. So then, did Labdanum belong to me? As I pumped it onto my own skin, I came to embody me as my own, but still a descendant of her. I smelled like an illusion of her. Haughty of her.

Her idiosyncrasies are more convoluted than the average persons’. Her puzzle parts are the kind that could take a lifetime of configuration to sort. When she spoke of something deeper than the physical realm, her voice would escalate by a couple octaves. It sounds like she’s asking a question or telling a secret.

I could see the way men were lured in. Her smooth skin radiated an aura of complexity, but only I knew why. I watched her as she unknowingly played with the instinctive biology of each of them. Innocently toiling with their primal desires. My pediatrician. Random men in the grocery store. Contractors. It was a captivation that would take hours to shake off, but for me, a Freudian lifetime.

Her throat spoke without the intentional vibration of sound. Her pheromones took control, while the language of her body deflected away from all that she would never let him close enough to see. In that space, he was left with an indeterminate feeling. And she was safe.