This poem has been submitted for possible publication.  It will be reposted as soon as possible upon final determination.  Please feel free to peruse my poesy at your leisure.

Thank you so much,
PrttyBrd

She smelled like you today...







                                                 ­     ...It felt like I cheated

It wasn't until I caught myself writing poetry about you that I realized it.
You are intoxicating.
You make every hair on the back of my neck stand up.
The thought of you alone gives me goose bumps.

I want to feel you on my lips.
On my neck.
On my thighs.
Every bone in my body aches for your touch.

Maybe it's a warning.
The alarm sounding.
No longer out of order from the last storm.
Trying to tell me that if I let you into every part of me,
Nothing will be left of me when you leave.

Everyone leaves.
They imprint their perfect fingers on every inch of me.
They trace my body with their touch,
And they let their scent give me a high.
Then they walk out that door and never come back.

I don't ever want you to leave.
I need you to hold me together when all I want to do is fall apart.
Keep me afloat when all I want to do is drown.
Kiss me when all I want is to feel alive.
Keep my hands tight around the promises you make when I think there's nothing left to hold on to.

Brittle dry earth beaming with longing,
For wet kisses from heavy heavens' door,
In soothing rain, finds the heart’s belonging,
Releasing the sweetest aroma...petrichor.

The mist of warm moist wafting playfully,
Kissing and engulfing in a subtle unworldly spin...
A feeling ensnared by the clutches of fond remembrance.
Like the cadence of your breaths upon my parched skin...

A taste of your last dance on my fervent lips,
Awoken with each drop, still makes me thirst,
I lift my head, entranced by memory’s grips,
Craving you, again to make my heart burst.

Here again...two drenched hearts encased in glass,
Latent spectres melded together as they did before,
Promises wrapped and bound to the gaits of the other,
In eternal dance, laced with everlasting redolent petrichor...

Dajena M
**rhymesmith

The scent of death
lingers for years
in a place

lodges in the soil
rots
and slowly compresses

composting down
deep down
in dirt

earth turns
seasons pass
time and space and silence

until the coiling roots
draw back again
and all that grows

from baby's tears
to blood red poppies
oaks and elms

bear testimony
to the forgotten
dead.

© M.L.Emmett

I tried to catch
a whiff of her scent,
as she walked past
there was none
but the putrefaction
of old dreams
stubs of old love
a black dress
and red shoes