scents

A pictured poem

Pictured Poetry created by Tremaine L. Loadholt

I love simple scents: not too loud & aggressive. And if you’ve ever dated me or you’re close to me in some way, you know this.

My home smells like sage, a lavender & amber or vanilla/wood candle or simple-scented incense. I don’t stray away from these.

One, because my nose is sensitive to loud scents and actually cannot handle them. Two, I’ve various allergies and scents that are too loud or fruity or over-the-top make my eyes itch and water and I begin a sneezing fit that can last longer than it should. Lol.

I know I’m weird. And I am okay with this.

Oddly enough, the woman I am digging on for the last year and some change is the same way. However, she’s asthmatic, so she doesn’t wear loud-scented perfumes and her home is a welcoming space smelling of sage or her favorite candles and incense. Soft & luring. Not over-the-top.

If we ever become anything more, I’ll be safe in her space. And that’s a beautiful thought.

Featured Prose of the Week

Lita Tiara joined A Cornered Gurl recently and is now apart of our Young Minds of Medium community. At only nineteen years of age, Lita strips down to bare bones and shows us what it feels like to grow from the pain of past events. She also shows us what it is to love in the time of heartache. This week’s feature is a prose piece by the young one entitled: To Those Whose Are No Longer Near. Please, encourage her heart, beautiful people.


To Those Who Are No Longer Near

A love letter to those who left. We deserve a proper goodbye.

Photo by Yuvraj Singh on Unsplash

It was 2:47 am in the blatant morning when despondency knocked on my door, intruding my weariness. I couldn’t say that it was what I expected to keep me company, yet somehow it has taken control over my state. I am now, restless.

For some unknown reason, the gleaming cold of the lonely night hugged me from behind and harrowed my aching back. I crave to delete every thought of you as fast as how your feelings swiftly evaded from my course.

I feel a constant pressure to remove myself from every known possible equation which would resolve in me and you.

A few seconds after, my head was swarmed with the scrumptious smell of the self-made brunch that you made me many months ago. How thoughtful of you back then for remembering how I like my eggs: scrambled and salty. My mind was succumbed with joy from every bite, knowing that they were made with pure intentions to relieve someone’s hunger.

Silly me for thinking that we would last until our hair shows no other color than ivory, the color of your favorite sheets that your younger self said this would suit best the childish projection of yours — how your future home would look like when you’re older.


Dews of my reasoning wanders off to God knows where when things could no longer possibly be. It yearns to wander to innumerable possibilities of a much more euphoric version of us, yet it wouldn’t bow to any boundaries which would remove me from your suffocating grip — removing every self-pleasing notion your words have projected, “I’m setting you free”.

The minutes refuse to stop rolling into hours, hours which approach the definite dawn yet, I’m sitting in the corner of my room filled with traces of where you used to be.

Crouching, I was, with my face buried between my knees — trying to let go of your soothing comfort from my body as fast as how you threw myself out from every known possible corner of your world.

I hoard each word you spat out that day:

I don’t think things can go back to the way it used to be between me and you.

They’ve consumed me raw fearlessly, without the slightest care. I could feel how frozen your heart was at the time, as I came face-to-face with the gnashing teeth of what I reckon those words would look like in the flesh. I lost the battle.

I don’t want to deal with you anymore.

The familiarity of what best describe who I am was nowhere to be found. They are not in the places where I would expect them to be — believe me I’ve looked. I’ve grown numb to the things that are holy.


It has now been weeks and I’m not weak.

I don’t want to ease myself into the pain anymore. Was I a better person when I was with you or vice versa, we might never know.

Yet it has come to my realization that we are now both in the place where we should be: where we won’t cry anymore.

This is the goodbye that I didn’t have the chance to say—

the light I never let out.


Originally published in A Cornered Gurl via Medium.

Full Plate

Because I am just a woman with a heart willing to love and no lover willing to accept it. Even if it’s right there in their face. Some people just have far too much on their plates to handle anything else.

Courtesy of Pinterest

I have my heart in my hands…

Not For Old Time’s Sake

he came over to chain my door,
to give an extra sense of security,
and I watched him choose
between two drills and hundreds of bits
as he examined the space.

metal.
thick, double-paned.
hollow.

he tapped the nails, then screwed
them, then drilled, then tapped again
and I remembered how eager he used
to be to make me happy
but I couldn’t muster up
any love for him no matter
how hard I tried.

today, he left me with extra bolts,
extra locks, and an extra dent
in my heart.
I should feel something for him,
I should, but I don’t.

and now his damn cologne
is all that I smell.
how will I get rid of that?