Vanilla Tincture

Taken aback by pungent odour, it’s hard to regain your composure once you’ve found a beautiful discord. A cacophany of sorts, or a rude awakening. Or perhaps a sad state of affairs.

Lanterns lightly lit at such small wicks of candles, the sky is painted with fireflies and spirit lanterns with a destination to nowhere. A quiet, lackluster night, so it seems. Perhaps a silent night where all other brooding souls rest or with legs intertwined. I haven’t a drop of sweat in this robe of mine, and as hours pass its red turns into lighter saturation, into grey.

I can hardly breathe.

Austerity may have its price, but it also has its benefits. Quiet reflection into watching ships sail – grandiose, makeshift or mundane, they bask in an open sea leading to the horizontal vacuum ahead. Like a maiden with a suitor out in sea, longingly awaiting a ship to take me away, yet knowing such a feat is not only impossible, but horrendously impractical.

It’s a silent celebration for myself, with not even the chirping of crickets or the hooting of owls to comfort a singularity as I. Just a little wisp between dilapidated homes of the departed and the journeymen, weaving between molded brick like a teardrop atop a wicker pattern – with no particular path to go, and no particular exit to pass.

Yet, the longer I stray into an ominous form, a strong scent of vanilla fills the air, sickly sweet and musky. Smooth as silk, yet viscous as honey. Had I retained the hands of passion and lust would I defile the very petals of an orchid and drain the vanilla from its beauty. To pilfer its beauty and carry its scent – its stench, yet its allure. And lick every drop of it, however deadly and intoxicating that would be.

But I’d have none of it, for I’ve given it all up to become a lonely wisp that can only look, but not touch, and to admire its scent.

And while the vanilla still follows me, I refuse to acknowledge it consciously, but instead marvel at its sticky, smooth and alluring scent that lightens veins like the lanterns of a dilapidated village. And for that, I refuse to regrow my hands of lust, and my feet of chivalry.