Olfactory Nerves Plucked Bitter Memoires Like Broken Piano Keys Poem by Amanda Saveley

It's funny how,
Even when I think I've washed myself clean of you,
You come into the front of my mind again.

My detergent smells like you
And sitting here, surrounded in the scent of my dryer sheets
I find myself reminiscing
Of things that were, things that weren't,
That could have been, but not
And I can't help but notice how I missed that smell
Your own distinct scent I tried so hard to find
On Wal-Mart shelves and lines of cologne bottles

I thought I'd lost it, that scent.
Grasping on to it like I sometimes wish I could you,
I tell myself it was for the better and that nothing good could have come from it
But just who do I think I'm fooling?

I miss you sometimes.
The kind of freedom you brought me
The feeling that I would never be alone
That feeling I...desperately...try to extract from my current relations
But fall short of by mere inches.

Perhaps you were my breaking point.
The last straw that broke the camel's hump
And I find it hysterical how I can find meaning in even that
To remind me of you
Or maybe,
Who I think is you...

That odd smell only our small-town Subway seems to have...
Entwined with that scent
That scent that nearly drives me mad whenever I catch it on a drift
Just enough to make me scramble to remember where I had it before
Just enough to make me insane

And yet, catching it in full force was all I really needed.
Unscrewing that cap of new detergent not-yet-tried to get a blast of nostalgia
It was the worst thing that could have ever happened to me.
But I won't let it be my undoing...

Because I will not break at the mention of your name anymore
I will not cry for what I thought was my only chance
I will not lie in bed, slowly killing myself from the inside,
Hoping to leave a bitter shell for someone to mend or break

I will not ask you to save me.
I do not have to.



I already have been.