image from creator.nightcafe.studio.com
This poem written for and submitted to 'Perfume Bottle" poetry contest, Craig Cornish, sponsor, September 11, 2025
PURPLE LIQUID TOMB ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Glass cool against her cheek, a curved silent, liquid prison. A vicious dawn clings to her skin-the scent of lavender and regret. She remembers spritzing, a nervous habit before sleep, a fragile shield against restless sleep and shadowy nights. Now, the night is gone, replaced with imprisoning purple, by the ghost of lavender, by the echo of her own skin. She inhales deeply trying to understand how she became the perfume, the distilled longing, instead of the woman who wore it. The world outside the perfume bottle, a blurry kaleidoscope, unreachable. Only the scent remains. ‘Do they smell me?’ ‘Do they understand me? This barrier of scent is a warning flashing, DO NOT APPOACH TOO CLOSELY.’ ‘Will anyone notice I’m gone? Will they reach for this bottle, spritzing themselves with my dis-ease and despair?’ She yells, but only the fragrance answers~ a silent floral shriek lost in the beautiful, gilded glass bottle. Lost in her liquid tomb, she releases a morbidly silent question. 'Is this mortality~ to be forever the scent of a woman who no longer exists outside this bottle?’
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