Scent of Cedar

I think a part of me wanted to write about you since the moment I laid my eyes on you. How is it that sometimes you lay your eyes upon the most ordinary human being and your mind just goes like "Yes, that's the one!"? I wanted to write about you but how do you write about someone so unexceptional? Maybe, I could write about how I remember every single detail about the first time I saw you. I could only write about things from the moment I met you because I cannot fathom anything before that.

You caught my eye when you were laughing with that friend of yours back in school. "How have I not seen this person before?" I had asked myself that day and I made it my mission to get to know you more because you seemed like the most interesting being on Earth. All of the boys wore the same white shirt and navy blue pants but you still somehow stood out in my eyes after that day. We introduced each other to all our favourite music and laughed about how crazy it was that we weren't in each other's life before. But, your ideas of living happily ever after in a foreign land might have been a bit too crazy for me at that age and soon all was left of you was the lingering smell of your cedar wood perfume.

The smell of that cedar wood returned again but in a different classroom. You were sleeping in the back bench and woke up to look at me through your mess of hair when I sat beside you.

"What happened to your hair?" you asked with a bit of concern after noticing my unevenly cut hair.

"Ugh, I was trying out this new haircut and as you can see it did not turn out well."

"It doesn't look bad, don't worry. It just stands out."

I returned a smile wondering how I had never noticed you before.

It turned out that we liked to cry to the same cheesy movies and shared a common hatred for burgers and all other messy foods. Soon, the same story played itself out until the only thing left of you was your cedar wood perfume with a hint of musk.

As time went by, the cedar wood scent faded away but your musky note stayed with me and I instantly recognised it again as you walked by my cubicle smelling of freshly ground coffee. You were wearing a polka dotted shirt in a nice shade of blue. You really knew how to dress and I wondered to myself, "How have I not noticed this person before?"

Tasnim Odrika has only one personality trait and that is cats. Share ideas for new personality traits with her at odrika_02@yahoo.com