Sometimes I swear I can smell a poem.

Some have in them top notes of a brewing coffee, mixed with the smell of drying ink, with a base of moldy paper heaps.

I can smell the dawn break on the poet's table; just a strip of enraged dust, floating unrestful in the otherwise dark and damp air.

Some smell like petrichor,

drops of anguish, sprinkled on dead tree trunks,

in a burning wildfire.

At times I smell the old hanging skin,

rubbing against paper, exposing time's toll.

The smell of wisdom, or that of a wasted life.

There are the pungent ones, that smell of a rotting soul, of blood, or a decayed existence, leaving a queasy unrest. It's an acquired taste, I suppose!

And if one really tries, it's hard to miss the middle notes on a few- of cold suppressed air, gasped between words, that attaches itself to you till you decide to wash it off.

Some don't carry a smell at all.

The smell, lost or absorbed, in indented pages, left unattended.

Impressions of a stain reminding of the oil once potent.

And like an addict,

I return to breathe, if only for a while,

the scent of a poem, that stayed,

long after their words could survive.