Sometimes I wonder about the scents of men. If perhaps you can smell regret,
sadness or fear on them.
I am convinced about the acrid reek of a man hiding his anxiety.
It almost licks you,
sour-tongued and invasive.
If you’ve ever been in a room
full of men, nervous and posturing, you’ve had it float towards you.
Neon yellow wet armpits full of hierarchies shifting skin on skin – contorting
through pores and out of their mouths. Anger is a different smell.
It is heavy. It slicks itself to you and refuses to move.
If you’ve been marked
by the scent of an angry man everyone can smell it.
I had a cat who loved me painfully.
His adoration was so absolute that he refused to let me sleep.
He pulled my hair and dumped books off shelves so that our waking hours together could be complete.
The day after the first big fight, the cat went out the window and didn’t come back.
Emily Cooper