My love gave me a bouquet of lilies and roses a couple of fragrant weeks ago. The lilies’ aroma overpowered the roses from the start; our apartment has been filled with their scent.

For the first few days, my primary experience of it was my association with funeral homes. After a while I moved past that and was surprised by how animalic they smelled, almost savory, like a floral ham. The scent seemed stronger from a distance—it asserted itself in the room, but when I stuck my nose into the bouquet, it became shy and I smelled the softer scent of petals.

I found this spread about lilies in Nez Magazine issue 6, which was fun to read alongside my experience.