SONGS OF OURSELVES

❦ promise

ask god if she believe in me and 

will she accept me as a deity

and tell me the secrecy won't keep you free

i'm sleeping

won't dream until the demons leave

❧ mac miller, "the festival"

"Urfan..." she moaned.

Humidity sweltered inside the dim tent.

Moisture dripped from the low beams and sizzled on Sunkanmi's unsuspecting head. No matter where she rested or hid, the wetness always seemed to find her. Swampy heat dampened her armpits and hairline and thighs. Sunkanmi thought she might drown in her own sweat. A dark pyramid stained the back of her shirt. She could fill a slop bucket with her secretions before noon. And it didn't matter how many times the medic dunked her feet in ice water; her body was already halfway to supernova the second she dried off.

"Urfan!" Sunkanmi writhed in her chair and kicked off her wool socks.

"What? What do you want now? If it's not one thing, it's another. I swear I never get a moment of peace with you around, woman."

"I'm melting."

Urfan glared at her from atop his bedroll, too drained to even fully unclasp his waistcoat.

"Poor you. Poor little Sunkanmi. A snow-born frostbitten child experiencing the tropical sun for the first time. How will she survive?"

"If I have to suffer another minute in this inferno I'm going to stage a mutiny," she said. "Even worse than the last one, and you know how that went for us."

"Ugh, don't remind me."

She unfastened her leather bracers and chucked them onto her cot, barely missing Urfan's face.

"Hey, watch it! Don't take your frustration out on me, I can't control the sun. We knew it'd be like this going in, didn't we?"

Of course, the heatwave barely affected Urfan the Un-freakin'-flappable. His wispy hair was only tastefully disheveled and his chest glowed like granite in an art studio. Urfan maintained the wholly satisfied and enviable air of a man who just finished a passionate romp with a secret lover. Touched and yet still untouchable.

Meanwhile, Sunkanmi was so ding-dang hot her eyes swelled shut. Her nose was a snot-faucet.

"I'm burning my clothes as soon as we get back home. Everything has to go. I don't even care."

Urfan laughed from where he reclined, pants slung low on his hips to let heat escape. "More fire? I thought smoke was your enemy."

"This isn't funny, Urfan. I am dying."

"Oh hush, you big baby. Don't say that. You know I'm terrible at planning funerals."

Sunkanmi pointedly ignored his teasing and unlocked the chest they shared. Their light-hearted banter might've lasted the night and well into the next morning if she hadn't gone digging for her hairbrush, but Sunkanmi never had much luck in the "easy" department to begin with.