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 //