Can We Smell with Our Hearts?

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                     Popular Science, April 2013

How long do I have to go without talking

before you stop listening?

I post personal ads on telephone poles:

Blue Belgian Bearded D’Anvers Cockerel

seeks life partner, height-weight-proportional please.

I have never felt so human. I have never felt

so dangerous. It turns out robots already

work side by side with us in rescue situations,

which of course is always

because when do we not need rescuing?

I imagine myself as a particular blood cell

with a specific role to play —

without olfactory information

I would swim in circles.

Suppose you had gone to Mississippi

for no particular reason: how long

before I thought to look in Hattiesburg?

How lonely I must appear.