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I have been thinking a lot about this time last year. Or maybe it was later in the summer? It was probably August? I had lost you completely by then. Texts got fewer, interactions got shorter, I saw you less and less and less and less and no more. Weeks passed, months probably. Every time I came in through the back, I could smell the tomato leaves.

I never knew what they smelled like until you planted them.

The garden was one of the last places we were together. Memories of tying the vines to anything and everything, desperately trying to provide structure to this growing monster. Picking up perfectly ripe orange-gold tomatoes while knocking so many more off the vines.

Maybe, sometimes, I could catch a glimpse.

A sliver of humor, a shadow of a smile. Your eyes looking upwards, trying to convey the nuances of your thoughts with just 2 hands. You were always good at puzzles. I wasn't, too impatient, my brain never able to keep up with my attention span.

That summer, I became obsessed with scents. Not fragrances, but with how scents could make you feel. Smell and memory are deeply linked in ways no human has completely figured out. Our olfactory nerves, the amygdala, the hippocampus. Somehow, our brain processes scent differently than our other senses. It's so weird how ----------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Tomato leaf scent"

"Photorealistic tomato leaf scent"

"tomato leaf top note"

"Fragrances with tomato leaf"

"List of tomato leaf perfumes"

"Indie perfume tomato"

"tomato leaf in fragrance prices"

"Garden scent perfume"

tomatoleafgardenscentfrangrancetearspricescentshippingsizesamplelastmessagesizecartnoteskinpriceoriginbatchgreenvegetalsharpformulas

Sample. Add to cart. Delivered.

A black vial, 2 inches high. I hesitated before opening it, placing a drop on my wrist and taking in the scent. I smelled it again and again and again and over and over and over and the question that wouldn't stop ricocheting off the walls of my mind: