Perfumes. Leaf One

Happy Birthday Esther. be always as beautiful.

The Haunted Canvas

I remember, Sandra. Of course, I remember.
I will never forget you.

I was in Paris, watching television. It was Culture Pub—a loud, funny, famous show about advertisements. My French wasn’t perfect; I couldn’t understand every word, but I loved the fast images, the jokes, the typical, noisy clutter of the commercial breaks.
Voices, laughter, the chaotic sounds of the screen… and then, suddenly, a brutal silence.

Out of the quiet, the music rose. And then, her voice. A haunting, operatic lament sung in a language I couldn’t place—a pseudo-language invented only for that song. It was powerful, like an ancient sorcery. I felt my skin shiver, my body turning helplessly toward the screen.

They were showing a perfume. The bottle looked vaguely like a silk scarf caught in motion.
It was Hermès.

In that fraction of a second, I was shaking, caught in a sudden wind of desire.
In that curved glass, I didn’t just see an advertisement.
I saw you.

I saw you wearing this perfume. You inhabited the screen before you ever inhabited the scent.

I worked for weeks, saving every bit of babysitting money I could and I felt rich. I went into the grand Hermès boutique on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, terrified and determined, and bought the smallest bottle of that perfume.
For you.

I know I am a fragile creature, built of dreams and evaporating seconds, terrified of how quickly the world moves forward.
I try to pin my life down so it isn’t scattered like ash by the wind of time. But I know it will be, and I will be forgotten. Yet right now, I remember. Again and again.
I remember you.

I desperately take photographs to freeze a face; I write diaries to lock away a date. But the eyes can lie, and words can soften with time.
The mystery is that to capture a soul—to trap a moment in time so fiercely that it never dies—you do not use ink. You use scent.

Perfumes are everything to me. They are life. Lives.

Every morning, I sit before the glass. It is a quiet, soft ritual.
I look at my collarbone, the hollow of my throat, the pale skin of my wrists. For a woman, a fragrance is the most intimate garment she will ever wear. It sits directly upon her pulse points, warming upon her pulse until it learns the rhythm of her heartbeat.

These are not just parts of my body; they are my presence, the lines of my life. They are where I am most exposed, and where I am most lethal.
This is where the magic settles. These are the perfume places.

I touch my neck as you touched me before, and I can almost feel your perfume from your wrist close to my face.
I feel myself and imagine how I could be felt. I dream of being felt as I was. Again.
By You

I lift the glass bottle of 24 Faubourg. I press the nozzle, and as the amber mist hits my skin, the wind of time stops. The years of pain, the final silence—it all vanishes.

Today, I wear your gold. I wear your light. I wear the life we lived.