Perfumers live to bottle summer in a ceaseless, amber-colored illusion –
exotic white flowers, beach waves, crisp linens –
and to reinforce the olfactory opulence that can be sampled, then discarded
once the tiny vessel’s nozzle expires (leaving that one tantalizing, unavailable
squirt) with names meant to evoke all the sets of every single film or show
about people who are rich or who are likewise unencumbered by what summer really smells like –
the food trash of the restaurant next door, spoiling and sweltering under the unbroken boxes;
the exhaust of a bus barely stopped for its next set of the season’s prisoners to board;
the overly ripe homeless denizen with his ubiquitous shopping cart and glittering eyes;
the stale glass of red wine in the kitchen sink every morning –
and, yet, I give into the escapism, even as I monitor the cost of summer’s twin terrors,
Ozone alerts and a blazing sun that incinerates us all equally.

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