wet

Friday, February 14 -- Running in the Parque Metropolitano with my host siblings at 6 a.m.

i’m wet.

wet on the thumbprint of my back and where my lower back joins my backside. wet as though i’d just done forty sit-ups in a mud puddle.  

            i’m wet like sweating, tossing through a fitful night, glancing at odd intervals at the alarm on bedside table.wet like rising in the fog of Quito’s pre-dawn darkness, where Pichincha’s white night-robe rolls down from the peak to the west, yet to dissolve with the morning.

i’m wet like the tinkling of the ornament that hangs on our front door, alerting my host mother to our entrances and sounding like so many latent raindrops falling from the eaves.

            i’m wet like the fingers of the trees in the shadows of the park, hands and arms that reached silently for us as we ran in the darkness, stroking and slapping our shoulders, and hips and the curved muscles of our calves.

            wet like the sweat that dripped from my forehead and tangled in my hair, curling the strays around my face. wet like the squealing of mud beneath our bounding feet, slipping and nearly falling, arms grasping at nothing to keep us upright.

i’m wet like my sneakers now resting on the windowsill, and my socks, drenched from the forest’s run-off that entered the porous fabric of my running shoes and wrinkled my feet.

            i’m wet like the baptismal waters that blanket-wrap runners at this godly hour each morning, wet with the breaking dawn, tearing the womb of darkness , entering the wet world singing – glory, glory, glory!