When I met you, I smelled cinnamon bark and resin —
yellow like beeswax, riesling, jaundice,

the peeled underbelly of citrus. Pith and cord, seed and syrup.
Blood and wine a double helix wrapped around your neck.

Maracas of clove and straw. The sommelier says you can taste it.
The smell of embers at a barbeque, sweat; a shower can’t wash off this memory.

Your body laid on my chest, streaks of white and red, vernix
fuses us like melted wax, each exhalation rises

like incense from the flame, disperses us into breath —