Savoring

slow down the fragmented illusion

so I can swim through the vestiges of this sweetness

this stickiness

I catch a whiff of the familiar, yet tantalizing, aroma

notes of jasmine, honey-roasted street nuts, coconut & papaya scented shea butter,

the 48 hours of peak peony season or heaven

the locomotive gust on a suffocatingly still subway platform in August

I know better than to get lost in perfumed clouds occluding my vision

and linear time

thickening as I dive headfirst, a saccharine frost is crusting, slowly reaching toward

me, bobbing around in the center searching for something I might have missed when it was

all that had been, and all that could be

I need to be immersed once more

before it becomes a sugar-coated memory

preserved, hardened