Ella K - Baiser de Florence Decant

It begins outside.

A field of irises moves in the sun, purple heads catching the light whenever the wind changes direction.

Then Florence closes around you.

Cool stone beneath your feet. Heavy church doors. Incense still hanging in the air from something that happened before you arrived. Old wood polished by hundreds of hands. Marble that has outlived everyone who first touched it.

You walk back into the heat.

There is powdered sugar on your fingers from a pastry.

And then someone kisses you.

For one second all of it exists at the same time: incense, iris, stone, warm skin, sugar.

The smoke eventually softens. Vanilla and heliotrope begin to blur the harder edges and the iris moves closer to the body.

What remains isn't really Florence anymore. It's the way a place becomes permanently attached to one particular person.