Perfume
Stranger, you smell like my dead dad. I have a cloud of weepy nostalgia for whatever perfume you have bought and wear.
Stranger, what is this scent called?
If I’d had to guess I would say it smells of lilies, but I don’t know what lilies smell like.
Stranger your perfume gives me puckish dreams.
You could be anyone in this line – the smell rising above the burnt coffee beans and cigarette smoke wafting through the restless door.
Or perhaps its all of you- where did you buy it from? Somewhere around the corner from the undertakers I suppose. Do you know the embalmed?
Stranger I feel like I have loved you in all the ways a son can.
Gregory Kearns is a poet who lives in Liverpool. Gregory is currently finishing his MFA in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and has been published in anthologies like Introduction X: The Poetry Business Book of New Poets.