Aromescence

She affected me like atmospheric pressure at first, almost a tickle behind the ears and heart.

14 years since we had met in person. Our odd-hours, online reconnection as much a dissociated dream as a reality; as much a theosophical possibility as a tangible life-path. A concept instead of a thing.

They had to help me to the back of the aircraft, where my chair was being unfolded. I was a few days out of surgery, the plaster still a prison, instead of a second skin. Painful humiliation.

We met at arrivals, and I needed a moment after the kiss to catch my breath.

Of course by then, I had experienced it, without knowing. Later, in the apartment, after silence together, I could identify it.

Human in weight, but much more intrinsic; delineated. A sensation like passing near a great mass in space, almost like superstition. I became aware of her aromescence as she reached behind me to grab her purse. I was in the wheelchair, and her neck, or some soft stretch of warm perfume, brushed my stubble. Static crackled in the hairs of my nostrils.

She was in my system.

Pain had been my companion; sluggish and bitter, and now...sensation became something beautiful and narcotic, something revolutionary.

The wheel locks snapped undone, and life opened. Points of immolation erupted in me with the smell of pomade, and deep forest, and breathlessness. Liberating and imprisoning. Her aromescence cast shackles on my grateful heart.