Skin on Skin

It smells like fruit for a minute, and then it smells like the person standing closest to you.

The apricot is on the counter, split, still warm from the window, and the room smells of it: soft, velvet-skinned, more like a memory of fruit than the fruit itself. She has not turned on the lamp. Sandalwood is next, and it is the real one, Santalum album, milky and quiet, the kind that seems to come from skin rather than from wood. It sits so close to the body that it is hard to tell where the perfume stops. Then, late, patchouli from Madagascar, earthy and slightly chocolate-dark, the note that keeps the sweetness honest and gives the evening its floor. Two people in a small kitchen, saying less than they mean. The apricot stone is still on the plate when the light finally goes. Neither of them moves to clear it.