there is a specific scent to august that has nothing to do with the month. it is the smell of a decision that has already been made, by the light, and by someone who is still here but has already left, somewhere inside.
you know the day. the sun is still warm on your arms. nothing has changed. and yet the air, for the first time, carries something of september, drier, with the faint dust of things about to be put away. the moment arrives all at once, complete.
în august te-am cuprins și am simțit cum inima mi se topește in august i held you and felt my heart melt
the poem is in the past tense. i held you. and at the end, august endures over me, dăinuiește peste mine. the warmth is real, and it is remembered.
a scent can be warm easily. warm in the past tense is harder.
two accords, one breath
august is built from two halves, made separately and then fused.
one is warmth: dry immortelle, like hay left in the sun, and the faintest trace of beeswax against skin.
the other is regret: dry roots and the mineral breath of incense, with a fig leaf gone quiet, dried and never green.
between them runs a bridge, so that from the first second on skin you cannot tell where one ends.
the test for every trial is simple and unforgiving. if an untrained nose can say that’s fig, or that’s labdanum, the trial has failed. memories don’t come with ingredient lists. they come whole and slightly out of focus, and they are gone before you can hold them still.
august is still in composition. it is meant to be the warmest of the three volumes, and the one that stays longest after you leave the room.
august · vol. ii of unspoken lines · in composition · tell me when