You passed me at a party once, it had to have been three years ago. Before I saw you, the way you smelled made me look up from my table of friends—you smelled like tobacco leaves and vanilla.

Your locs were pulled back into a bun and if memory serves, you were wearing a navy blue, satin baseball jacket.

“Who the fuck is that?”

My friends told me your name and I wanted to get up from the booth where I was sitting, adjust my dress and say the right thing. But it didn’t come to me fast enough. & anyway, you’d only popped into Skylark to be courteous—you didn’t even stay for a drink; you smiled at the birthday man and embraced him, you shook the hands that had to be shaken, patted some on the shoulders.

Then you were gone.

We’ve never spoken. But I remember once, on a trip through the Canyonlands, someone ahead of me on the trail puffed on a vapor pen and I passed through the spot where they exhaled. It was vanilla & when the smell mixed with the heat & dusty earth, I thought of you—ethereally bathed in the Jazz club’s red light, parting the crowd at a birthday party, and oblivious to the interminable longing you’d roused in me.