a child's-fist of a bottle, clear-glass, fitted with a rubber-bulb dropper the colour of dried earth. inside, a tenth of an inch of essence the colour of strong tea — twenty times a lemon, pressed into a teaspoon. unscrew the cap and the whole room thinks of a window the kitchen used to have.
the label is the size of a postage stamp. a printed lemon, two leaves, drawn with one line. essence of in micro-caps; Lemon in a tipped italic the printer set crooked on purpose. below: pure · concentrated; the volume; the maker, in a typeface that smells faintly of a 1970s recipe-card.
used by the grandmother — one drop into a sponge-cake batter, a second into the icing, never a third. used now by the kitchen mostly for the smell. the bottle lasts longer than the cook; the cake is still warm in someone's memory of an afternoon that did not happen yet this year.
a single drop on the wrist behind the ear and you will, all day, be told by strangers that something smells like noon.
see the warmer lavender water, the colder olive oil, and — for the cake — the slow ritual of an afternoon worth baking through.