The smell of smoke is one that lingers. It clings to fabric, to leather, to hair, to skin, until you rely solely on the fire alarm to tell you what is burning and what is a memory hitchhiking on your belongings. It grabs and sticks, dragging you back to fire-lit nights spent on the sea wall, the moon so bright the stars shrank back in awe. A night lit by silver, an ocean of mercury stretching out across the bay.
The wind blew out the cheap matches, backs turned and coats spread to shelter the tiny flame; sparks fitfully thrown onto newspaper and the tiny glow of pride when one finally caught - huddling on our fronts warming cheeks against the growing blaze, firelight dancing in two sets of eyes. Warm backs line up to watch the sea and that strong silver gaze lay upon the water, glowing upon the sand and stretching all the way to the castle at the peak of the headland, its orange eyes paling in compare.
Bottles of cheap rosé are passed across the concrete distance between still-new hands and legs dangling off into false promises of safety while laughter ensues as burnt toast is set alight, poked clumsily upon sticks broken in haste from bushes along the way – marshmallows glowing with blue fire and ghostly mutters of, ‘what are you thinking?’ uttered from beneath lowered lashes half-lidded green eyes seeking deceptively soft open brown ones.
A scorch mark is burned into the stone, still there months later when you dare to go back, clinging as stubbornly to soft, vignette memories as the smell of burning wood to your backpack, and there still even later as you try once more to say a failed goodbye.
The smell of smoke is one that lingers like love caught in the cobwebbed hallways of a broken heart – gradually fading until it becomes imperceptible; no matter how hard you press your nose to it or how deeply you breathe, all you can smell is good, clean leather.
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