Perfume Review: Montale Aoud Roses Petals

I have new love. My love smells "like a red, red rose, that's newly sprung in June", like golden spices, like dark resins and woods. It smells warm, like passion, and sharp, like implacable fate. There is sweetness in my love that makes it almost innocent. And there is sensuality in it that is practically animal, untamed.

I was going to break my love down into little details for you, to describe its almost fruity top notes of honeyed petals, its heart, which is like dark-red velvet of roses adorned with the gold thread of saffron, its sultry, nocturnal base of amber and woods, and the cruel allure of its oud that binds all other notes together like a brutal and passionate black cord. But I felt that my humble, prosaic analysis could not possibly do justice to the incredible beauty of my new love.

Instead I decided to tell you how it makes me feel. It makes me feel comforted and complete yet strangely perturbed. Its beauty is so poignant, it breaks my heart. It stirs a longing in me that I cannot properly identify. Kahlil Gibran's words come closest to describing what it is that my new love makes me want:

To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips.

Aoud Roses Petals has notes of roses, geranium, amber, teak, kayak and cedar woods, gurgum and saffron. It is available at Suravi, $150.00-$210.00, with a 10% discount and free shipping for the members of Makeupalley and Basenotes.

The painting is Heaven's Embrace by Laurie Blank, from onessimofineart.com.