15/03/2026
A scent passes through the air…
and suddenly forgotten rooms begin to open.
The Scent Portal
Emotional Alchemy
Sometimes the air inclines slightly,
as though something invisible had passed through it.
A trace of cedar.
A brightness of citrus.
The slow resinous breath
of something older than memory.
And the present loosens.
The scent moves quietly through the stillness,
like a key turning somewhere
inside the invisible.
For a moment
another season passes through the air.
The shy Amaryllis,
leaning from her narrow window of morning,
her single root pressing downward
with that blind patience
only living things remember.
Something inside my chest
softens.
For a breath or two
I feel that small root wandering
through the darker corridors of my pulse —
touching something
I had almost forgotten.
Something in the air deepens.
My hands come slowly into awareness.
Their lines grow clearer,
and the skin begins to reveal
its quiet cartography —
roads of tenderness,
salt,
and the many crossings of a life
that refused to disappear.
Perhaps every life leaves its map
somewhere beneath the surface of the body.
And far away
a solitary image begins to gather.
A tower beside the restless sea.
Inside it
the Lighthouse Keeper climbs the narrow steps,
lifting his fragile lantern
as though guarding a warmth
the world might easily extinguish.
Following him upward
I feel a strange tenderness —
as if somewhere within me
a small lantern
had been waiting patiently
for the moment it might glow again.
Gradually the scent softens.
The room gathers itself again.
But the air inside the chest
is no longer the same.
Hidden rooms have opened.
Forgotten maps have stirred.
Fragile lanterns
glimmer somewhere
in the distant towers of memory.
And for a moment
the invisible
breathes through me.
Laura Iva Studios
