Mothers Perfume 

My mother wore vanilla fields perfume.

Her room always smelled of a field of flowers as my brother and I snuck into her bed under the cover of moonlight. The house felt too big, her scent ending in the middle of the staircase, never blooming in our upstairs rooms. It felt like her protection ended when we couldn’t smell her.

My blankets smell like vanilla, as moonlight steals in through the windows, I feel the covers shift as my son sneaks into my bed, crawling up into my arms as I pretend to be asleep.

The overstuffed blue couch, the coatrack on the kitchen wall…totems of her ever-vigilant love, watching over us as we crashed down the stairs on a carpet tube, slid on socked feet across the hardwood floor of the dining room, and even watched every song we jammed to on Guitar Hero. Her perfume would linger on our clothes while we were in school, a quick inhale to root us in safety.

Vanilla settles around my apartment, tickling the nose of those who walk by the coatrack in the hallway, and drapes the shoulders of anyone who sits on the couch. Gently nodding along to my son, as he plays Rock Band drums.

For a while, on Fridays, I could smell the faint linger of fried fish trying to overpower the vanilla, as the weight of work settled heavily onto my mothers’ shoulders.

Sometimes the vanilla doesn’t cover the scent of work, my heart heavy and limbs sore. I wonder if my son can smell it as he greets me at the door, a smile pushing its way out regardless of my fatigue, my tired arms reaching for him.

We didn’t know, my brother and I…as children often don’t, but when she changed her perfume, she threw a way a piece of her past. A piece she helped me remember as joyful, but for her, the memories are more complicated. I think, maybe now, I understand.

Amber Pierson has had works featured in several magazines, including but not limited to: The Elevation Review, In Parenthesis, and Mortal Mag. When not writing, you can find Amber adventuring with her son, tucked in blankets reading, and laughing with her husband.