Your Scent

              I can tell you have a scent when you walk by. Not in a bad way mind you, I don’t use the term scent loosely. It’s kind of like laundry, but classier than that. Your scent, is a scent, but it’s not an odor. Scents kind of make up odors, in a way. Scents are singular, while odors are general. A scent is unique, and it catches in your head, but an odor, an odor is like a sheet that covers up scents, scents that are sewn together in a lumpy mattress.
         Sometimes you can tell from far away if someone has a scent, or an odor. Words like crisp or fresh are attractive, but they have an undertone that lets you know someone’s scent. Odor is like slouched, or smudged, maybe even wrinkled. Odor is like that boy at school, you know, the one who always wears the same red shirt and doesn’t smile while eating.
         Everyone knows those bruises are from his daddy, but the athletic director, the new one, he just laps up those spelunking stories. Remember when he came to school that one day, with the cut across his face? I remember. I wanted to run up and cover his ears when I heard all the whispers, but then I remembered how he smelled. His odor makes you flinch. It makes you wrinkle your nose in disgust as he walks by, but it also makes you guilty, because you know that sympathy only comes when you’re far enough away. There are different scents under his odor. Scents like ignorance, and brittle pain. The fabric of his odor, his sheet, it’s called society. Society is what makes his scents an odor.
         So I guess, when you think about it, you can’t really determine what people smell like, from the way that they smell.