Synkroniciti is pleased to welcome back writer and visual artist Denise Bossarte of Houston with “Toiletries,” a narrative poem with a kinship to flash. The narrator confesses that she has been stealing her boyfriend’s hygiene products after they make love in order to retain his presence in her daily life. Denise balances tenderness with a feral eroticism in a way that is quietly devastating and also subtly filled with self-deprecating humor. Many of us have experienced pheromones overloading our senses, but we probably have not resorted to petty theft to ease the ache. Beneath her audacity lies a quieter truth: the fear that intimacy is fleeting, that desire evaporates faster than scent.
Denise creates a narrative that draws our imagination with an economy of words. The eroticism is never coarse or explicit—it’s embodied. This theft is not malicious; it is a coping ritual, a way of managing the delicious uncertainty that comes with wanting someone deeply. Each object becomes a small anchor, something she can hold when the emotional ground shifts. She is trying to stabilize the relationship in the only language that feels reliable to her: the sensory memory of him.
“He worries about the missing/ toiletries, wonders if he’s/ getting absent-minded,/ grumbles at the cost of/ replacement. I just smile/ my secret smile, grateful/ he has a lousy/ sense of smell.”
We’re left wondering whether his obliviousness is limited to scent, or whether he simply moves through the world with less attunement than she does, never sensing the heat she carries. Her longing burns in the quiet spaces where he never thinks to look, a fire she tends alone while he drifts past the edge of her desire.
Denise Bossarte is an award-winning author, poet, photographer, and visual artist whose passion is inspiring others. Her photography is in the Buddhist Contemplative Photography tradition, Miksang. She has been a practitioner of Miksang photography for 15 years and a Miksang teacher for over 12 years.
She enjoys writing, exploring new art forms, and teaching contemplative photography workshops. She lives in Texas with her husband and literary cat, Za’ Ji.