what we obtain too cheaply we esteem too lightly—Thomas Paine

     He smells of blood, apples, and alcohol. When I walk in the supermarket, I get confused as I pass its people and departments. A scent clicks him into my mind and I have to turn to search for the source, hoping to discover him. Today I found two apples, fuji and braeburn, but not him.

     The blood is from his nose. This morning he stood steaming in front of me, the white of his towel tanning his skin. Still moist, he was talking, smiling, and I saw bright red creasing below his septum and nostrils.

     “Your nose,” I said.

     “Oh,” he mummed, cover-wiping it as he turned back to the bathroom. His eyes turned first, hiding, but before they did I saw the same look he gave me last night in his friend’s bathroom when I pushed open the door to see him standing over my friend at the toilet, rolled dollar pinched in his fingers. Like I was going to punish him.

     A few lines remained on the toilet tank when I went in to pee, and I examined them. Not like sugar. Not like powdered sugar or baking soda or anything wholesome. A little dry and dirty; unsterile. Not even unbleached flour. More like the honey-scented powder I rub on my thighs when I think I might see him, when he might smell me. When my blood rushes.

     I wish I could see him do it, but he doesn’t want me to. He has the most perfect nose. I want to see him use it. I want to see how he does it. I wonder if that is too grotesquely voyeuristic. I don’t care.

     I don’t know where the apples come from. I mean the ones in his scent, not the ones on my kitchen counter. Organic, the skin is smooth and unwaxed, sand-soft like his. Or maybe he is inside. I can smell the flesh beneath, and I run my nose up over their curves the way I run it over his shoulder, contemplating a bite. His skin shimmers slightly in our dull, venetian-blinded moonlight.

     When he doesn’t get a chance to brush his teeth with that paste that smells like Trident Original, the alcohol is on his breath. Otherwise it seeps from his body, with a clinical flavor more like peroxide or iodine than Tanqueray or beer. I can’t taste it when I am in his mouth; I only smell it. His kisses are mostly teeth. On my neck he leaves red and blue imprints from his bicuspids, but my blood never breaks the surface. It presses against my skin to escape, flushing upwards from the heat of being with him.

     His odors rise up in the air of the places I go. They fly up my nose and infuse my brain with thoughts of him. They pierce and spike me; make me slightly mad for a fleeting period. They make me want him again and again, and more, and I already want him all the time. I want to inhale him with each breath, as constantly and peacefully as his in sleep. He stops to take in a huge gasp every now and then, as his skin ripens in silver light, and my air enters him through sinuses newly cleared by the white dirt that springs that crimson wake.