Mephitine
You will know me before you see me, will sense me from twenty paces. I am all sour milk top-notes, that pissy catch in the back of your throat while you try, politely, not to gag. The never-fresh, wearing a coat ripe with my own history, I assail your nose with a putrid cumulus. You’ll identify days-old cabbage, sweetly rotten, insinuating itself with unspeakable rudeness on your appalled tongue; a bitter shit-fug of old heat, ground deeply into skin. This is how ugly smells. I cannot help but disgrace myself, it’s in my nature, an involuntary eggy spritz that lines the lungs and burns the eyes. I stay with you long after I am gone, scent-marking your skin, clothes, hair – a shaming signature left behind me, invisible in the ruined air.