Perfumes

It's been two years since I last smelled your perfume on your skin but the scent of it still pulls at my heartstrings and brings a tear to my eye. A stranger has passed me by, smelling just like you, and I close my eyes... dreaming that for a couple of minutes it is you who is nearby, and not some guy I have never seen before and will probably never see again.

You have made that scent yours -- even when thousands, perhaps even millions of other men across the globe have claimed it for their own as well. That smell will always remind me of you and you alone. No other man can wear it the way you can.

A few months after we broke up, I rode in an empty elevator smelling of your perfume. I almost broke down right there. I thought, God was playing a trick on me. I felt your presence so strongly, it was almost as if I was back in your arms. And then the elevator doors opened and in came the smells of the outside world, and with it a healthy dose of reality that you are gone.

Once in a while you take me out to dinner to talk and to keep the farce going that we are still friends. I say farce because I can never just be your friend. I still love you, can't you see that? I sit through our meal, smelling your new perfume and trying to smile and be happy for you as you talk about your newest date. You never seem to notice that my heart breaks every time you mention some other girl.

It is only at home that I let the tears flow, that I wish over and over again that you'd go back to using your old perfume, that you'd come back to me.

But wishing never brings anything so I'm forced to dry my tears. And I do my best to keep my eyes dry and to keep the pain at bay... at least until someone else wearing your perfume passes by, and once again I can pretend you are still mine, Papao ko.