Read the lavender and you might expect something fresh, calming, laundered. It is the opposite of that. It is damp driftwood in a swamp. Bald cypress standing in the mire; few people know they thrive there, in the wet soils of floodplain lakes, along the riparian corridors. There was a canary once. Her feathers soaked, her face smudged with mud, and still she believed this was her safe haven. Lavender and lemon verbena were only the scent of a shared past. Of promises that seem, now, all too fragile. What was underneath was smoke and tar the whole time.
