The Scent of Unfinished Letters

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The First Spritz

You wear it to a funeral.

Not yours. Not yet. Your grandmother’s, in a church that smells of wax and resignation. The Wind Flowers clings to your wrists, a whisper of jasmine and regret. The priest drones. You press your nose to your pulse point, inhaling the ghost of her hydrangeas, the ones she tended until her hands shook. The perfume blooms: iris roots splitting soil, citrus sharp as a paring knife, musk like the inside of her glove drawer.

She would’ve hated this, you think. Too expensive. Too sad.

You wear it anyway.

The Anatomy of Almost

Wind Flowers isn’t a scent. It’s a verb.

It’s the act of reaching for someone’s hand on a train platform and pulling back. It’s drafting emails you’ll never send. It’s the pause between I love you and but.

The top notes lie. Bergamot, bright as a lie. “I’m fine,” you tell the mirror. “It’s just pollen.”

Then the jasmine—not the sultry night-blooming kind, but the frail clusters your neighbor drowns in pesticide. You catch it through open windows, gaggingly sweet, and wonder why beautiful things so often reek of decay.

The drydown is musk, but not animalic. Not desire. The musk of a sweater worn by a lover who left it behind. You bury your face in the wool, hoping to suffocate.

The Woman on the Metro

She sits across from you, wrists bare, neckline high. But you smell it—Wind Flowers, timid behind her earlobe. You invent her life:

- She paints watercolors of invasive species.

- She cries at operas but tells no one.

- She’s never said I love you first.

At her stop, she rises. The train lurches. Your knees brush. For a heartbeat, her scent is yours.

Later, you’ll buy the perfume, chasing that collision.

The Science of Longing

Perfumers call it sillage—the trail a fragrance leaves. You call it haunting.

You spray it on scarves and stuff them in drawers. Months later, unfolding linen, the jasmine ambushes you. It smells like the last summer your mother gardened, like the apology letter you wrote your father and burned.

A scientist would cite molecules binding to memory. You cite grief.

The Experiment

You wear it to a dinner party.

“What’s that scent?” asks a man with teeth too white. “It’s… melancholy.”

You laugh, bitter as orange rind. “It’s Creed. Wind Flowers.”

He nods, uncomprehending.

Later, in his bed, he buries his face in your neck. “You still smell like rain,” he mumbles.

You don’t correct him.

The Letting Go

The bottle lasts three years. You ration it:

- Job interviews.

- Divorce papers.

- The day you scatter her ashes.

When it empties, you keep the vessel on your dresser. A relic. A threat.

The Replica

They discontinue it, of course.

You hunt decants online, vials of nostalgia sold by strangers. One arrives labeled “Wind Flowers 2018 batch.” You dab it on, and it’s wrong—harsher, like a photocopy of a fire.

You weep. Not for the perfume. For the truth:

Some ghosts refuse to stay bottled.

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