Breadcrumb #186

BETH HATCHER

Afterwards I sprayed your perfume on everything.
Everything.
The cactus that you killed. The dusty curtains that need cleaning. My bedroom. Yours.
(I'm still doing it.)
I coat the house with the pale pink stuff. Empty bottle after bottle of the cheap powdery scent. Did Dad get you a gift set or something? Because I keep finding more bottles in your closet.
Every day I spray them and every day the scent mixes with the smells of fried chicken and bubbling macaroni that some new cousin brought.
It mixes with their pity.
Dad doesn't leave bed for days now. He yells to stop spraying, but he keeps sniffing your clothes. I've seen him, neck deep in your  work blazers.
Maybe I'll give his nose a break and just douse my room. The fluffy spread. The flowered walls. All the things that you had wanted.
Death is what scents my dreams.  Florescent skeletons grinning through the night.
They make me remember — until I spray, and get to forget again.

I hate the smell of your perfume.
I hate having a dead mother more.
But this is the scent of flowers that will never die and leave me.

So I spray and spray and spray until you are everywhere.

Again.

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