Cologne

By Dawn S. Davies

Not too long ago I was in a crowded public place, trying to slip past people without touching them, when I caught a whiff of the same cologne my ex-husband wore while we were married. I would have thought it would sicken me, revisiting this scent of something so long dead, shoveled down into the underground of memory, the way we bury regret and sadness in order to keep on moving through life. But this cologne? It smelled like good things: his starchy, ironed dress shirt when we hugged, the way he rocked each of our warm, new babies in the night, the way he sanded a door, stirred a pot of chili, then tasted it. I stopped and stood while a holograph of what I once loved about him bloomed in the crowd, rose up amid echo and dance of strangers’ heat, then was gone, leaving me with a quick, beautiful gift of forgiveness.

Photo "Drents Museum" provided by Gisella Klein, via Flickr creative commons license.