humidity hovers around 90 percent even after dark, what i imagine night in a bayou is, even though i’ve never been
still,
i’ll take this corn sweat
over
the asphalt,
the people,
the noise,
the garbage,
the grimied towers, canyons and rivers of cement
and this unrelenting red dirt road dust and sandy soil
instead of
hyperscale “centers of data”
and this light that only
glows quiet
and doesn’t rudely intrude and idle all night //
much of my skin is sun-spotted in shades of brown; the backs of my hand are worn and washed shiny;
my bare feet, beyond dirty;
my soles and palms roughened,
well before your five o’clock
shadow
but
my hands,
my footprint,
my money
they’re cleaner, i think;
not laundered, but with an intentional, continuous cleansing — a secular daily ghusl //
at dusk,
i fill a basin with scented salts
and wear away at another
bar of Lava soap
while rationing my remaining bars of West Bank, olive soap — packaged and delivered in a box with xeroxed pages of poems by Palestinian poets well before 2023 //
i slip on my soft, worn, blue linen pyjamas,
four threadbare pairs in rotation,
they’ve stopped selling them in french and indigo blue
he sews the buttons back on and mends the seams for me as needed when he’s here / i’ve been choosing grass green colored thread //
i help my old dog up the stairs,
maybe this will be the last time, i somberly, soberly, think, stifling a cry; wondering how i will get him down them on my own in the morning
back downstairs again to turn off all incandescent light,
inside and outside, like a real dad
it’s just that i like the way the house now disappears in the summer dark of the maturing, young trees that i alone chose and planted
all thoughts of ‘In Cold Blood’, long dismissed and replaced by realer threats //
i fill and cap glass bottles of cold well water for my bedside
i pretend for a moment that i will be awake long enough to read some pages from any book tonight, and wash my reading glasses;
upstairs, again, finally,
i turn the box fan on low
i slide into my 30 year-old bed
saying,
we’ll see about this so-called “tomorrow”, my loves,
i imagine the opposite of waking up, what that might be like, for me, — and for them
they whisper from all the corners:
“rest your head, you worry too much”
we pray the same silent prayer for each other:
