Honeysuckle and Lilac

I wrote this a few weeks ago, inspired by falling asleep next to the scented candle I had been obsessed with a year and a half ago. I spent that whole summer writing on my laptop, and just the smell of the candle brought back all the memories from before I got ill.

It's a cool night, there are cars outside my window.
Their headlights flit across my closed eyelids
and the clock tick ticks in the corner.
But that smell obscures it all:
Sweet honeysuckle and lilac
from the candle on my windowsill.

I am no longer in my bed.
Rewind a year and a half -
Summer's sticky haze hangs onto my clothes.
Flies buzz lazily around my desk
where I perch, in shorts with lemonade
as the candle burns beside me.
And I write on a dusty laptop
to the soundtrack of honeysuckle and lilac.

Two months later, I shattered,
and the candle went away.
Water took the place of the lemonade,
a sleek work laptop where my dusty one had been,
and my memory on a shelf,
shrouded in honeysuckle and lilac.