The Roses

- as in, "Take time to smell the..." -

It's lamentable but true that I can't always do this. Not from any lack of desire, but because I just don't have a very keen sense of smell anymore. Or more precisely, it comes and goes - sometimes I smell almost nothing for days but then suddenly I can pick up on odors like a goddam bloodhound. Like, being able to smell someone smoking a cigarette three blocks away. Or the perfume someone in a passing car is wearing.

Then back to zero. Or stranger - I sometimes experience olfactory hallucinations. (I am NOT making this up.) Like smelling kerosene in a mostly odorless office. For an hour.

But even if I can't smell the roses today, I can damn well see them. And for a few minutes, nothing else matters.