Carnal

Trumpet vines overhang aging stucco doorways, creating some cool respite for the bees seeking sweetness in the stamina of the afternoon.  Ruby-throated birds, like mosquitoes, sip a Coca-Cola that has spilled and lies evaporating in a sticky pool on the street.  Somewhere, children are yelling after a football.

In the shadows, intentions are made.  Intentions wrapped in paper and string.  Colognes are opened after baths and caramel skin is anointed in Tres Fleurs and Saint Teresa water.  An effusion of Bay Rhum and roses floats out a window on an upper floor, and down to the passers-by, acknowledgment that even in this soporific heat, someone stirs.

Cigars, dry, their outer wrappings peeling, are lit and left to smolder as long as they will.  Cones of brown sugar are placed on floors, surrounded by feathers and photos.  Veves are drawn in chalk and housepaint.  Shirts are swapped for beads.  Flames flicker in a hundred glass cylinders, making tiny church windows from images of saints and orisha.

In the heat of the afternoon, someone will be uncrossed.