The air smells like parafin, peculiar for a sea town
where the air is thick with briny life, salty and swollen,
a burning candle somewhere aromatizes cottages
suburban slakes of tract homes cut to sidle boulevards.
And the sweat of my back drying astringent-tight
skin shrunken in sere retreat until the morning dew.
It is cool and soothing to be motionless, settling in.
In the gaze of the other 