The Scent of a Woman I Once Loved

“Acrid: Unpleasantly sharp, pungent, or bitter to the taste or smell. Caustic in language or tone.”

I once told her that her scent was ineffably sweet with a trace of almonds and just a hint, a trace, an echo; perhaps the merest shadow of something acrid, the merest drop in the deepest sea yet still a foreboding, seemingly something I’d once sensed. She wasn’t thrilled by my description, although she didn’t really know what acrid meant.

Perhaps pungent would have been a better choice, or was my choice of words a premonition of bitter choices yet to come.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2013; all rights reserved