Sniffing death

AMOY patay.

Funny how something that elicits feelings of delight could also evoke dread and sorrow, at once beautiful and morbid.

Death, to me, isn’t the smell of putrid flesh, but that of decaying flowers—wilted, forgotten and discarded, reminiscences of visits to the Catholic cemetery of my childhood.

I don’t believe I’ve smelled real decomposing human flesh. But I have surely sniffed mortality, in the form of those withered blooms on deserted graves, the fetor so strong it haunts, it sticks to your memory. Once loved and lovely, harbingers of joy, just like the ones entombed beneath the stone, they are no more.

One day, they will be the ones I love. One day, that will be me.