'Evening in Paris' (Poetry Monthly)

Cherry

By Silver Spun Sand

Tue, 12 Apr 2016
  • 3792 reads
12 comments
 
Camden Lock, doing the junk shop rounds...a friend and me, an hour or so to kill. Found a vintage Dolcis shoebox – black patent stilettos still inside. Closed my eyes.  It was 1952. There was me, aged five, tottering round the kitchen in my mother’s brand-new ones. Another brilliant find – a  compact just like the one she’d carried in her handbag, with its pretty silvered lid. She’d undone it with her perfectly fancy nails, but I bit mine, so took to prizing it off with a knife, and taking a long, deep sniff of that blush coloured dust so patted a smidgeon on my nose; home alone as I was, most every night. The shop about to close as I finger. wistfully, a small blue glass bottle, labelled ‘Evening in Paris’, by Bourjois; her favourite perfume, along with White Fire. Undoing its crude glass stopper, no genie inside, only she – preening herself in front of a mirror over the cooker; a splash behind each ear and a dab on each wrist, dressed up to the nines. Don’t get the wrong impression, though. I don’t miss her; at least, no more now, than then.
Certificate PG
Poetry Monthly
Silver Spun Sand Poems
Love
Autobiography

Comments

Submitted by VeraClark on

A Parisian departure. Particularly like how you collide two worlds, two eras together and a relection which paints all the colours of a mother.

 

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

'When two worlds collide...' most certainly, Vera.

Tina

 

Submitted by Bee on

You've included something for all the senses. Loved this.

Bee

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

Ta, dear Bee.  Appreciated.

Tina

 

Submitted by Starfish Girl on

Last sentence heart breaking.

Lindy

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

Hi there, Lindy.  Indebted to you for reading, and sharing your thoughts.

Tina

 

Submitted by airyfairy on

Perfumes are so evocative.  For me Carven's Ma Griffe, if I ever catch a whiff of it, has a very similar effect.  Beautiful writing.

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

Ah...Ma Griffe...now you're talking.

Tina

 

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

Hi Tina,

it's amazing how those significant memories can be jogged by a certain fragrance, or obtaining that certain item that once played such an important part in our lives at the time.

I loved the bit about you at five, tottering around the kithchen in your Mother's brand-new stilettos, funny how most young girls used to love dressing up...I know I did.

Thank you for sharing.

Jenny. smiley

 

 

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

...my pleasure, Jenny, especially as  you got so much from my ramblingssmiley

Tina

 

Submitted by forest_for_ever on

I read this piece again and again.  There was something about it I compelled me to keep going over it.  The magic of it is not what it tells me directly, it's what is created in my mind about your mother.  I have often been told less is more and if I ever wanted to return to my recollections about my father, this is how I'd like to write. 

Loved it.

 

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

ffe...only write as yourself, but most of all, write from your heart...as you just did, by the waysmiley  Tina