Clove Cigarette

A bittersweet mixture of Knott’s Berry Farm at night, ripe with the promise of cruising, anonymous teenagers (although I was usually the “friend” in that scenario), and the disastrous Halloween party I attended in high school, when what I didn’t know about the guy I’d been giggling with in the corner all night blew up in my face, in the form of his late-arriving, angry, tear-stained girlfriend. I fled the party in shame, remorseful and angry that I wasn’t able to resolve what I felt was an innocent misunderstanding.

Today, the sweet smell begs to be inhaled deeply, even as the warning that “smoking cloves makes holes in your lungs” claxons away in my head. The mixture of youthful insouciance, anticipation, and hyperintensity is a heady one–practically worthy of reformulating as incense, except that the accompanying entwined emotions of excitement and remorse aren’t really a combination I’d willingly seek out for very long.