Scent of Memory

Sunscreen and bluewater breeze, dune sand and sweat.
Fresh mown grass, tinged with cherry-citrus humidity and perspiration.
Petrichor and loam.
Campfire smoke.
Bright apple and newly fallen leaves.
Crisp fresh snow and slow-sap pine.

These are the scents of seasons, each tied to memories.

Of time spent, of love lost.
Of explorations. Physical, sensual.
Of rawness and the earthy reality of sex.

These scents of seasons are cyclical reminders.

Of the way he squirmed and “Ouch!”ed when I slid my hand over his cock, brushing the dune sand off in places but – unintentionally – rubbing the tiny grains, glass-sharp, into his shaft where they’d stuck themselves to his skin.

Of the scent of my own arousal.  Heady, sharp, salty-sweet in the summer sun.

Of making love:  in the rain, outside the ring of fiery heat thrown off by burning logs, on a leaf-dirt bed in the autumn woods.

Of fucking on a worn blanket thrown over frozen ground, the iced mud ridges of 20-degree solid plowed earth rubbing like knuckles against my back while the sweat dried into icicles on our skin.

Every seasons emits a scent.

For me, each is vastly different from the other but are all equally evocative.

The scent of the outdoors is the scent of memory.

And the memories — wildly sweet, freeingly rebellious, intuitively exploratory, occasionally painful — of What Once Was include, among them…

History.
Laughter.
Growth.
Excitement.
Loss.

Occasionally love.

And always,

SEX.