And I may be making too big of a deal out of it, but it gave me pause. I thought, do I want to smell like him? Do I want his imprint in my glands? It felt too intimate, like I'd seen his mother in the supermarket clipping coupons. I didn't want to carry it. I just wanted to be myself in my skin.
I think about this sometimes, when I take off my shoes, when I roll over in bed and catch the warm hair smell in the pillow, when my dog buries her nose between my breasts. What does she know that I don't, I wonder. Who else is here, radiating from my pores?
I think of the people I've eaten with, slept next to, grasped hands with, broken hearts, kindred souls, words exchanged in passing. I wish there was a DNA test I could take, someone in a white coat I could ask. Which ones stayed? I would say, while she scribbled on a clipboard. And how long I will carry them?
I just somehow know that when it comes down to it, when we try to trace back our building blocks, it's not going to be about what we remember. Our minds lie to us too much. It's going to be about who we smell like.
