The Borrowed Scent

I put on the jacket and found it there,

caught in the collar, specific and old—

detergent and something more rare,

a scent that I suddenly hold

as proof of a time

I'd thought I'd left behind, sublime

in its specificity, the way one smell

can bring back the whole person,

the whole place, the whole swell

of before, and I discern

that this borrowed garment

is now my moment

of vertigo, of almost believing

I could wear someone else's past,

that the scent would keep cleaving

to me, that this would last,

that I could borrow the before

and keep it. But I can't. I restore

the jacket. The smell fades.

The person who wore it

never knew that their shades

of detergent would store it

all back in me, that their neck

held the thing I can't check.