Per Fumum

(through smoke) My mother became an ornithologist when the grackle tumbled through barbecue smoke and fell at her feet. Soon she learned why singers cage birds; it can take weeks to memorize a melody — the first days lost as they mope and warble a friendless note, the same tone every animal memorizes hours into breathing. It’s a note a cologne would emit if the bottle was struck while something mystical was aligned with something even more mystical but farther away. My father was an astronomer for forty minutes in a row the first time a bus took us so far from streetlights he could point out constellations that may or may not have been Draco, Orion, Aquila, or Crux. When they faded I resented the sun’s excess, a combination of fires I couldn’t smell. The first chemist was a perfumer whose combinations, brushed against pulse points, were unlocked by quickening blood. From stolen perfumes I concocted my personal toxin. It was no more deadly than as much water to any creature the size of a roach. I grew suspicious of my plate and lighter Bunsen burner, the tiny vials accumulating in my closet. I was a chemist for months before I learned the difference between poisoned and drowned. When my bed caught fire it smelled like a garden.