Sharmila Ray - Smell

SMELL


There are too many people here hurrying towards the metro. Their body odour spill over themselves mingle in the dusty air in soft slow motion.You hold my hand and we move away. My cologne-doused smell an explosion on your senses.


Our bodies quiver like shooting stars and emit smell. I feel we are stuffed tomatoes sauted over slow heat. I come closer. You smell like green chillies and asafoetida. I come closer. I feel you don’t smell at all of chilly-asafoetida. To the four winds I curse which plays hide and seek with your smell, little realizing that they are cupids tantalizing me.I look into your eyes. Here and there are outcrops of oddities, lichen and yes, smell. Not one but many- one upon the other, one beside the other, one mingling with the other. Smell, spicy, cloying, distant, oppressive.
Your eyes, our sea, green with decayed seaweeds smelling pungent and of deep substances. And then there is a clash of senses, smack of kisses. Textured, grainy-soft like luscious strawberries. Somewhere the blood runs deep astringent, formidable like soilders defending the land which smells of freshly cut grass.

There is silence.

No word.
No sound.
Only smell. Violent, delicate drenching ourselves.
You come closer to me. Your breath
like hot chocolate spreads over me.
You ask me ‘do you feel anything? ’
I answer ‘smell me.’

Sharmila Ray

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/smell-4/