Stranger’s Perfume

When I smell perfume in public,

and it is the same scent

that once clung to my shirt

on a random day last March—

the world collapses quietly.

Not in noise,

but in recognition.

As if time does not move forward,

only sideways,

looping back through invisible corridors

I did not agree to re-enter.

For a second,

I am not here anymore.

I am there again—

where everything was ordinary,

where nothing warned me

that memory could live inside fabric,

waiting patiently

to be breathed in again.

The air becomes a thief.

It steals my present

and replaces it

with something softer,

something heavier,

something I had already learned

to survive without.

And just like that,

a stranger’s perfume

turns into a private haunting

no one else can see.