linen cupboard · summer-stored · clean, narrow
It is not the flower. The flower was dried four summers ago and folded into a small muslin bag and pushed into the back of a drawer. What remains is the volatile essence — linalool, linalyl acetate — exhaling at the rate of perhaps an exhale a year, and the cupboard receives it gratefully.
The cupboard belongs to the household. Within it: napkins folded by the seamstress, sheets washed for guests who do not come, a bolt of unbleached cotton bought against an emergency. The lavender is meant to keep the moth from the linen. It also keeps the linen, in some small way, from belonging entirely to the present.
One remembers a great-aunt's wrist. One remembers a hospital one was visiting and not visited at. One remembers the soap of a house one stayed in for a week as a child and never returned to.
field note · open the cupboard slowly. the smell prefers a slow encounter; it withdraws from haste and gives more to those who let the door swing of its own accord.
see · the seamstress · a portrait · lampshade rose · ritual · memory