the most important thing in the world

my empty bottle of rose perfume

My beautiful, beautiful, beautiful friends,

This letter is going to be a short one this evening, mainly because I am colour coding my suitcase, and figuring out how I am going to pack the last 8 months into a box with four wheels on it.

It is Sunday, it is my last day in Rome, and I am sitting on the couch with a bowl of lemon ricotta pasta. There’s a second espresso beside me, and I have all of the windows of my apartment open so the scent of fresh laundry can be evenly dispersed. 

I have officially finished my favourite bottle of rose perfume. I bought it on a trip to Florence, back in 2018, and it is my all-time, favourite scent. I have linked it above because it’s actually named “MM” after fellow Gemini, Marilyn Monroe, and it is described as a scent filled with roses and jasmine, as well as: exuberant, seductive, and fragile. Lol. 

And because I have officially finished that giant bottle of perfume, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that time back in May, when I wrote “What Isn’t Ours”, and how it began with:

I wake up to a bottle of red nail polish and an almost empty bottle of rose perfume beside me. I have lost count of all of the moments and memories that bottle carries, held inside by a gold cap. And how many memories we were going to make with those moments.

When I wrote that newsletter (and coincidentally, the end of Failing Gracefully), I had been staying at a friend’s apartment, while looking for my own. And there are little things about that apartment that I’ll never forget. How the sunshine from early April and May would stream in through the linen curtains and onto the kitchen island. The way my yellow journal matched the yellow espresso machine. The rows and rows of travel books and the way her bottles of amaro lined the bottom shelves. And, of course, the neighbour who would practice his violin every evening at 5 pm. 

I knew it wasn’t permanent. And I knew it wasn’t mine, but it didn’t have to be.

I had never felt like a stranger to her apartment. I remember the first time I walked in, after a 14 hour travel day, and finally being able to take a breath. The lights in the living room were dimmed, I took the hottest shower of my life, and then curled into bed. 

You know what word I love? Alchemy. That sort of unknown magic that aligns you with a place or person at a certain time. When you open the door for the first time, but it doesn’t feel like the first time. It feels like the first of many. 

There are many endings that I am grappling with today. But the empty bottle of rose perfume is the most poetic one.

Someone once told me that time is the most important thing in the world. Without it, we would have nothing. We wouldn’t have those memories that our perfume carries, and we wouldn’t be handed those unexpected opportunities that lead us to alchemy.  

It all goes by so, so, so fast. It all goes by so fast. 

A lot of time has passed since those afternoons spent in her apartment with him. And truth be told, he was never mine, either.

But when I asked him what he wanted more of, and when he told me that it was time - I wish I had told him that the universe controls how much time is given to us, and that us and alchemy control what we do with those moments.

Time erases a lot of things. But some memories aren’t meant to be erased. Some are meant to live in an empty bottle of rose perfume, held inside by a gold cap.

And I hope, when he left that apartment on those early summer afternoons, the smell of roses and jasmine lingered on him, just like how the smell of his cigarettes always lingered on me. 

Here’s to new perfume bottles, roses, goodbyes, and alchemy.

I love you. So, so, so much.

Emily