A starving man smells meat from a mile away, just like a hyena does when its belly is grumbling or its mind is empty, and haven’t all our bellies and minds been that way when we were younger?

Mine had been. So, from a certain age, my eyes had been open, my ears straining, and my nose smelling for something other than the tobacco and bourbon my mother told me would be my future, just as it was hers.

The citrus I smelled first was tempting in its freshness, its juvenile joy, but it turned out to be envious and empty, just like the sandalwood I was told to like but never understood the use of. It was confusing, and I asked myself if I was the one whose scent was wrong, but I don’t think I smelled of anything really, and I don’t know if I even had a sense of taste until my nose picked up the most cloyingly sweet scent of vanilla and berry.

It could have been strawberry, or blueberry, or cranberry, or some non-berry fruit, but you told me it was raspberry with the biggest smile filled with pink chewing gum and a laughter that was beyond contagious.

Later, I liked to say that I always knew it was raspberry. Not because I knew or because I didn’t, but because I wanted to have known, although I’m not sure what I knew at all.

I guess I knew nothing. Because you told me it was the scent of some woman I never heard of, maybe a singer, or a dancer, or a construct of a person you built in your mind to make you believe in something other than your own aching belly. But I nodded and listened as if I knew who that woman was or was interested in her life, although I only wanted to know who the girl in front of me was. The one with the crooked braids, the mismatching stockings, and the glossy lipstick that smelled like a berry I had never tasted, and once I had, I knew I was right. No berry could ever taste as sweet as this.

It was the first and last time I was ever right about something because when I told you my favorite TV show, my favorite book, and my favorite scent, you only laughed and told me I was wrong. You showed me what the right TV show was, the right book, and the right scent to wear when we left the house, sneaked over the garden where the roses glared enviously at the sweet smell they could never possess. It was this scent that I wore to our first date.

The bar was dim but that was good, and the barkeep was old and leered, as the roses had, upon sniffing our scent which was even better because after a quick lean over the counter, neck stretching and chest prodding he served us the drinks we should not have laid our lips upon, because the sweetness faded, replaced by bitter reality as the two boys approached.

It was the last time my nose had smelled this kind of sugary scent, unhindered by beer, and the body odor of whatever boy was next to you as our first date turned to the second, the second to the third, and among the changing hands on my skin, the replaceable mouths on my neck, only you stayed along with the bitterness.

It was long after I stopped counting the dates and the faces separating us that you announced that you had found the one. “The one what?” I asked myself. The one whose taste was the least bitter? Whose scent clouded the air between us the least? Or the one who did it the most?

I guess I never understood you because when you announced that truth, you didn’t leave. You stayed, you laughed, you teased, you hurt something deep I couldn’t understand with the way your fingers roamed on a foreign body, the way a hand wrapped around your braids, and the way someone else’s lips got to taste the berries I so much craved.

But I guess I also never understood myself because when you announced that ruse, I didn’t leave either. I mimicked a person whose eyes were open, whose ears were listening, and whose nose was searching for a smell as pleasantly insignificant as I could find, until I found someone to put his hands on my body, whose fingers were in my hair, and whose lips tasted the emptiness of some fruit lipstick I couldn’t even remember to name.

That was the last time we were even.

Evenly spaced on two mountains facing each other in our castles of glass.

Even thinking about it now, I realize it could have never stayed that way.

Because when you said you liked them, you put a stone in place of the glass, so I said I loved them to put one in place of mine.

When I said I wanted to spend more time at their place, you said you’d move in with them.

When you said you would get a cat, I said we would get a dog.

When I said I wanted to have a ring, you bought one and snuck it onto your finger.

When you got married, I stuck a ring on mine on the very day you threw the bouquet as far away from me as you could.

When I said we were thinking about children, you told me you were pregnant. When you got your first child, I was looking at the positive test of my own.

When you had your third, they said it was enough, and when I had my third, my doctor said I couldn’t have another one.

You breastfed all your children; mine were potty-trained first.

Your children had a better sleep schedule; mine walked first.

You had the better house, I had the better garden.

You had the better kitchen, I had the better car.

You had the better—

You had—

You had everything.

Everything I ever wanted, but none of the ones I just listed were among them.

When I met you I knew everything was at stake because the stakes of our lives are too high, and the outcome too small, and the thing we chased is not the thing we knew was right, because what would have made us be what we should have been was the thing that kept dangling before our faces, or behind our feet—getting tangled in the steps of our tango, between the pawns traded on our board, and the sword clashing in our war of who would give up first.

It could have been me or it could have been you, to choose to dangle themselves off this cliff, not knowing if the other would reach out a hand or snip with their scissors.

It could have been me to choose a path that might lead to happiness.

But what would have been the price of that?