Review of Bois d'Argent by Yaroslavna Lasytsya

Dry wood and myrrh meet the senses — stern, like the fields after harvest, their frost still whispering in the stubble. The scent is sharp, proud, yet withdrawn, like the distance between man and his remembered youth. Amber gleams there, but it is no fire — it is the cool coin of moonlight, tempered by cypress shade and the bitter green of juniper berries. Silver runs through the forest heart of this perfume. It glimmers as the moon glimmers on a blade of a sickle — clear, hard, yet tender upon the velvet dark of sleeping woods. There comes the breath of juniper, and with it, the hush of evening in a stone lodge somewhere in the Scottish Lowlands: the slow crack of logs, the smoke threading up, the air steeped in birch tar and pine sap, faithful as old workmen’s hands. Then iris drifts down, blue as smoke over snow, softening the resins with its dreamlike powder. Nothing in it is heavy; everything hovers, airy, thoughtful — a prayer uttered half in sleep. Honey and vanilla move like pale moths in the dusk, tasting sweetness only in passing, never lingering long. This forest stands between autumn and winter — its birches white and lean, stripped of adornment, yet proud in spirit. You can feel in their stillness a quiet endurance, a tender defiance. Strength, as always, comes from places that never boast — from gentle things that simply remain.