I smelt your perfume in the lift today,

Felt my cheek brushed by an invisible rose,

Your touch  and your scent, then the doors

Closed like blades ,cutting off that memory

Before my eyes , but worse, leaving as one shred

The hope, un-amputatable as a curse,

That you had just got out one floor below.

 So I press  the button to go down,

The doors slide back once more

I step  out  ,and staring

Down a stale- Sunday dinner- odoured corridor,

Seek a glimpse of you fleeing to the brink

Of the dreary stairwell, coat a-flutter

against the  oblong window, like wings in silhouette.

Hope , like alcohol, is after all, addictive as all ritual,

A mimic joy to decorate despair, a poor pretence.

Still, it was your perfume, and  still

 I challenge all coincidence.

I press the button to go down again.

I step out into another empty hall.