Heather Emmanuel

CITRUS, NECTARINE

You don’t notice it at first. The peeled orange stings the paper cut on your ring finger. The scent — no more than a nectarine ghost — gone. Linen breeze, your favourite fabric softener, is a name on a bottle. When you hold the dried towel to your face, there is only absence tangled between threads. You take your younger sister to swim practice, and the chlorine doesn’t pierce your nostrils the way it should. The tang of childhood summers, Saturday mornings, poolside afternoons – nothing comes. Vinegar, garlic. Vanilla and macadamia. Wet grass after the rain. It's an unanchored absence. Much of your belonging is chemical, invisible. How scent can flood a moment with life. It’s not so bad, they say. You could be blind or deaf or both. You nod. You mourn. You curse modern packaging: no use-by dates stamped in faded ink. You check the stove every morning and evening. Each plug, each electric pulse at the wall. You shower twice a day when you can, purge your skin of all the wrongs that lead to this moment. You ask yourself, is it me? The doctor says it's minor. You can't smell your niece's talcum powder and excuse yourself to weep into the sleeve of your cardigan. The disconnect leaves a crevice that bleeds. Tears from your lacrimal glands – you now know – press into curled eyelashes. There isn't a word for this, not for the loss, the fade out. Salt layers all savoury dishes, excess sugar on anything sweet. Still, you bite and endure the texture, the slide between your teeth, numb against your tongue. Another orange peel, to be sure. The sting returns. The scent does not.

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