The Scent In The Mirror

It’s so dumb and common to speak of
the mirror moment of an easy
and tired description of
introspection. I’m not less
susceptible for knowing it’s
a cliche. That said,
when I see the desertification
below my eyes, the end-zone theatrics
of the silver overwhelming my beard
and brow’s defenses, I take a moment
to shift my sense and note how
all the scents of all I’ve been through
have stuck to me almost in spite of the visuals;
I smell everything from early sex to first death in that image,
and now and then the fragrance
of roses, lilacs, every one of my teachers’ eau de colognes
and aftershaves; stale cigarettes,
beer and whisky long soaked into cheap carpets,
Thai sticks smoldering, the antiseptic skin-burn
of cocaine cresting inside my pore-pocked nose;
suddenly I am young again in defiance
of the mirror’s insistence that I am not.
I inhale and suck my youth straight out
of that reflection, and the clinging flavor
of all those years takes my old breath away.