Soap Does Not Mistake Itself For Perfume.

The reclaiming of memories

I bought my old soap again. I haven’t had it since I was 21 or 20 even. I don’t know why, perhaps because it was a hassle to order online and I got lazy. Or else because, when things go bad in the way they do at those ages, the first thing sacrificed was the little luxuries because I was unaware of how important they were. The package arrived 15 minutes before I had to get ready for work. I’d been cleaning the apartment and went down with two trash bags and found it in the lobby. A big white box with the logo on the side. In the elevator, I turned the box over in my hand with a strange sense of history. I knew the product. I could feel the sensation of the packaging within, see the color, but I couldn’t quite remember how it smelled. Only that I liked it which is a great success in and of itself because I am particular about scents as they often turn my stomach. 

Entering the apartment, hot for lack of AC, I turned immediately down the hall to the bathroom. It would have been just as easy to wait until my shower that night to use this soap again. I was not waiting around or checking the tracking information each morning. I had no clue when it would arrive only that it would eventually and I hoped on walks home from work I’d remember to look for it. But something about the sense of time lost between the last I had such a luxury was weighing on me. Not in an excited, happy to splurge way, but a nervous reminder of what we lose even as we remember. How what was once a monthly purchase had for some reason stopped arriving. Even the scent was lost having once been my favorite.