The Stench
A toxic love poem
I smelled a stench.
It was…
Stencheus. Stenchy. Stenchful.
Green and vaporous, if it could be seen. But it could not.
I was never certain from where it came.
I emptied the trash, scrubbed the floors.
Yet the stench remained.
I preoccupied myself with sniffing,
certain I’d find the source.
Yet no matter how strong, it eluded me.
I asked you if you smelled the stench.
You shot me that look, brown eyes with flecks of green,
brimful of indignation.
“No,” you promised, sniffing wildly to prove it.
“There is nothing.”
I didn’t want to say, but it seemed to come… from you.
Sensing my suspicion,
you confessed.
“A rotten tooth,” you pointed to your incisor.
Finally — the mystery solved!
Such relief, just to know.
Yet, once repaired, the stench remained.
One day, like a nurse, I stripped you of all your clothes,
I would get to the bottom of it.
Sure enough, I found a wound, a cyst, filled with pus.
“I will heal it,” I promised, thrilled with new purpose,
squeezing it clean, applying salves and healing bandages.
Yet, as it healed, the stench grew stronger.
So used to the stench did I become,
before long I could no longer smell it.
My senses were dulled, engulfed.
My search for the stench was over.
It never existed!
Yet, there were times . . .
When I stepped out to the grocery store,
the smell of citrus tickled my sinuses.
I smelled the stench then, as I returned, stronger than ever.
In time, if I worked hard to forget it,
I no longer noticed.
Yet, I never actually forgot the stench.
In quiet moments, I worried.
When you weren’t looking, I sniffed.
If only I could find it,
I would remove the sickness and replace the rot.
If only I knew.
Then the day came. That month-long day.
You thought I lay sleeping,
but I was only pretending,
forcing the fetid air in and out slowly
as I laid still.
Eager to show you my content.
Through the tiny crack below my eyelid, I saw you
awake in the wee hours of the morning,
standing at the mirror,
your brown eyes glancing at me in the black glass,
to be sure I was asleep.
Feeling assured, you peeled off your skin.
In the mirror I saw you
prying your appearances off,
like dried candle wax children peel from fingertips.
I almost jumped out of bed to stop you,
sure you would draw blood.
Yet, I saw.
Behind your skin was not blood,
nor veins,
nor bones,
nor the fleshy stuff
of humanity.
Your face was full of human waste.
Brown with flecks of green, a ribbon of blood.
Your lips were hemorrhoids.
Your eyes, testicles.
Your nose — an anus.
I could not help but gasp!
That’s when you caught me looking.
“This is all your fault!!”
your dripping, swollen, dung-filled cavity spat.
“How?” I implored.
“If only you had given me a laxative, I wouldn’t be so full of shit.”
I left. This time for good.
Into the clean air, I ran, finally knowing.
The stench was not from wounds,
or filthy ways, or your dirty habits,
though you had plenty of those.
The stench was the essence of you.
I am finally free of it,
And yet, the memory of the stench
sometimes haunts me.
My heart yearns, not for the stench, god no,
but for the search, the search for the stench.
So captivated was I by finding its source,
that I mistook the mystery of it for love.
