The Scent...

Since I've been getting some good feedback from the previous post on racism and its resurgence, I thought I'd follow up with a controversial poem I wrote last year after reading Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marques, last year. This poem sparked great conversation with several associates of mine and continues to whenever someone asks me to read it. So let's keep the wheels turning and the discourse flowing!

And before people start persecuting me, remember: this was inspired by a story. It's not my personal opinion!!!

Scent of a Black Woman

She thought she knew him so well.
Having shared a life, nothing could be left out…
She thought.

I know his favorite foods, cook them
just right and even know when
they are craved. I know his taste in women:
No Black, no Yellow, no Red, no Brown:
strictly Porcelain.
He would never entertain thoughts so sacrilege,
so entirely impure.
I speak his thoughts before he can
think them himself;
I am his conscience.
I know his scent and what he’s done
when I smell his clothes before I clean them.
I know everything.

What is this smell emanating from his pants?
This scent with which his shirt is infused?
It comes not from him or any routine activity.
Never have I smelled it;
surely there is no need for alarm…
Things will be normal again on the morrow.

Now she smells this foreign scent everyday.
Routine, indeed!
It has been months, yet the scent remains unaddressed.
What can it be? She casually sets his clothes
in a heap before him and makes not a sound.
He looks up from his paper and begins to cry.
Almost relieved, he repents his affaire d’amour.
She stares through him with eyes of blue ice.
She’s forgiven him many transgressions,
one night stands and more, but he knows she will never
forgive him for bringing this evil into their home:
the scent of a Black woman.

©2005 Vicky T. Davis