The saffron burns off by the third hour. What grips your collar is Australian sandalwood • dry, patient, warmer than the skin beneath.

Butter and toasted hazelnut, pulled a minute late from the oven. The vanilla underneath has gone dark, closer to leather than cream.

Greek saffron • two hours of red in the field, then gone. On your wrist it tightens, resinous, stretched thin as caramel before it snaps.

Ambrette seed pressed cold in the Peruvian valleys. Less a flower than the inside of a wrist after sleep • warm, faintly salted, alive.

A lychee crushed into ice. Cold first, then the pink pepper bites back, then a sweetness that retreats. It lingers an hour on the cheek.

Haitian vetiver root drawn by pressure, no heat. Smoke without the campfire, earth without the dirt. By night it slides to your collarbone.

A green chili with manners. The bite stays brief and rude, gone before you name it. What lingers is the seed • sharp, grass-cut, clean.

Resin dragged across hot asphalt at three in the afternoon. Dry, citric, almost industrial. A city in August, not a temple. It stays.

Tuberose without the lace, reduced to its stamen • bitter, sharp, faintly metallic. It dries fast, and what stays is skin, not bouquet.