Heated Words

Erin Sweeten

I. Devil

My friend the Georgian says she’ll put some good old-fashioned fear of the Lord into my misbehavers. “Y’all think this here chaleur is bad, kids? Just wait till y’all git to hell. You’re gonna find out right quick how it feels to be hot, praise God. Indeed you will!” Every day I walk home with the African heat perched on the place where neck becomes spine, a small, patient, habitual devil.

II. Slosh

Ash comes upon us like snow, white and new with the wind. Our dresses stick to our breasts, our sour armpits; the sun burns a hole in the blank white sky, burns a chalky path across the school yard, where dust burns the grass white. There is no smoke. There is no wild crackle, no seething red-orange air. Just the cooling mystery of drifting ashes, so calm I expect children to run buoyant from their classrooms to catch the flakes on their tongues, scoop them into balls, stop at cold white-filmed puddles to slosh.

III. Squeeze

Sweating hollows him out in chunks; his collarbones cast shadows. He drapes wet shirts and pants over chair backs when he returns from class, his body a stranger after all these years. His back is a jail window when I pull him close and squeeze.

IV. Boogie

Nigerian radio: they can never seem to get it right, that balderdash of guffaws and half-played songs, but it fills the room with English on windy nights when the neighbor girl screams and screams. We open the balcony door to catch the night breeze, turn out the lights because our song has come on air and we are sick of the grammar books stacked six deep. We false start, stop, start again, but this is wild and sweet, three stories up and no one sees we don’t know how to boogie.