Sweet Sweat

Someone else’s sweat against my cheek. Not the sweet sweat of a lover or the sticky inevitability of a child, but the sun-beaten-down-on perspiration of a woman I greet as she passes me. Jacqueline. She is a machann who sells her wares in between the school and my house, so I see her each afternoon as I return to my abode. Angrily, she passed today. She was up on Delmas Swasant-Kenz—arguing with another machann about something, for when she storms down the street I inquire,

“Poukisa ou fache” (why are you angry)?

Her words returned void. Some disagreement between her and one of the other women who faithfully sits along the street, waiting for passersby to run their hands over a ripe zaboca or fig: to purchase.

Somehow sweat is sweet sometimes. In the middle of my workday, over my lunch break, is when our cheeks brushed—mine was fairly dry from being incubated in air conditioning all morning and hers was dripping moisture from standing under the orb in the sky all maten (morning).

(NANOWRIMO Entry)