The Scent of a Party

The scent of a party is anxiety mingled with eyeliner - eyes that look with fingers crossed for some nonchalant chatter to develop over ice. It floats around long after your French exit, caught in cushion and lingering in lace - the dress you bought to impress someone you’d not yet met. The memory of a party hovers like cigarette fumes, wafting through fingers clutching helplessly at a past unattainable; an invisibly present forever stuck to the lips of a teenage ex-smoker. At midnight, a party’s smell is a handshake musk curled beside lust, morphing into crushed crisps on carpets, burnt toast and leather-brown tea by morning. A cure for a hangover. The odour of it hangs around in shamed text messages and profile updates, the flashbulb of ironic sepia photographs printed. Its aroma stays, long after you’ve gone.