Panamanian Nights

Every night is the same.

The only pyjamas I wear are the sheets, and every morning they are ready to wring. Jesús Chrísto- the heat! It never lets up. The nine night-time hours don’t cool; not once, not for one minute.

This room is a zoo. I watch fireflies flicker and flirt, and listen as tiny, bizarre, translucent lizards make their high-pitch bark. Mosquitoes big as cats circle and stalk uncovered flesh. I drift off to a lullaby from the slum next door: salsa music drowning in static. But I know I sleep well, because I dream in Spanish.

The mornings begin with a survey: skin clammy, sheets damp, fireflies extinguished, lizards rigid, and the hopeless mosquito-repelling coil burned to a perfect ash replica on the floor.

Out of bed, I begin the horror-movie daily ritual of scraping dry blood from under my fingernails. Those monstrous mosquitoes maraud all night, and I scratch the bites in my sleep. For eleven months my legs look ebolic and twenty years later I still have the pockmark scars.

Every day is soupy as the sun boils the air. In the shower –a single pipe poking out the wall- I wash away my night layer and for five precious minutes, I’m clean.