THE DRY VULGAR SMELL

You wore a smell that was not you. My insides curled up in disgust at it, I breathed in expecting to find solace and familiarity, but I breathed in a stranger. It was like hugging a friend to look at their face and discover someone you've never seen before. All of me pulled away from you, because it wasn't you any longer. You looked at me with those strange eyes, no longer soft but removed in another place, and that strange smell came off of you in small waves, lingered in my throat, and settled in a thick, unpleasant heap at the bottom of my stomach.

I sat across a stranger to cry and spill my heart of confessions of love for who he once was, but I didn't recognize him anymore. Did you build yourself full of excuses and euphemisms (LIES?) And come forth a peeled person? Where did you slaughter and bury the old? Your eyes are holes that I trip into, your skin strange and unyielding. Who are you, and what did you do with those soft eyes that once were mine? What did you do to the smell I loved so much? What kinds of dangerous new clockwork is clicking and ticking behind those faraway eyes?

I learned and loved the treasured ways of old, but the new is full of mechanical viciousness I do not comprehend, and its knives are out to get me. Your voice is dull blades prodding me and pulling my insides apart, drawing red lumps and smoothie storm bruises that are tender and vulnerable. I thought it was you, but it isn't. The dry, vulgar smell sitting sickly as dregs in my watery stomach is proof enough.