Crossword-Solution: SMELLOF 7 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 12

Your daughter is ugly. She knows loss intimately, carries whole cities in her belly. As a child, relatives wouldn’t hold her. She was splintered wood and sea water. They said she reminded them of the war. On her fifteenth birthday you taught herhow to tie her hair like rope and smoke it over burning frankincense. You made her gargle rosewaterand while she coughed, saidmacaanto girls like you shouldn’t smellof lonely or empty. You are her mother. Why did you not warn her, hold…

Ultimately, we will lose each otherto something. I would hope for grandcircumstance — death or disaster. But it might not be that way at all. It might be that you walk outone morning after making loveto buy cigarettes, and never return, or I fall in love with another …It might be a slow drift into indifference. Either way, we’ll have to learnto bear the weight of the eventualitythat we will lose each other to something. So why not begin now, while your headrests like a perfec…

Her feet moved into the vast space, but all she couldsee was Cyrus. He strode through the room the way acaptain commands his ship. Was it possible his maroon bruise made him more dashing? He was a fine sight in a black broadcloth coat. Hersalacious gaze dropped to a brass button lower on hiswaistcoat. The metal glimmered, winking at her withflirtatious intent very near the tuft of hair she rememberedso well at his navel. The corner of Cyrus’s mouth crooked. If shelooked ready…