March 11, The Tiny. Pink and White, Ice Cream Cone

I first see it

illuminated from underneath

by the fluorescent light.

This means

that their heads are in the darkness

and their shoulders

but their forearms, and their hands

and the bright, sparkly tunics behind

catch the blue light eagerly.

Everything about this scene is not my own.

The wobbly rusted cart, painted on the side.

The fair with the essence of "jang"

I myself am wearing a tunic,

and a headscarf.

We all are.

But caught in the centerpiece of this floodlight,

is a tiny, artificially bright object of something I know.

The tiny, pink and white, ice cream cone.

Xam naa ne, bi, dafa xew.

These preteen girls have bypassed their xaalis, past cheap bracelets and 100 CFA rings-

for an affair of gout.

They study it in a small circle,

the disinterested boy honking his battered detatched horn.

5 times to a honk. (Our bus broke down on the way here. It had no windows, and the air conditioning was "pan."

They turn it round,

and poke their pointed tongues into its grainy smoothness.

Then they hold it back,

look at it,

and small smiles of delight brush out on their faces.

First time ice cream in a hot country.