Sweat My first girl's mother exercised by walking up and down the stairs of their elegant house, from attic to basement and back. For hours. She wore a jogging suit and she listened to soap operas on the TVs she blared from each floor. Sometimes she called out to the characters, panting, to dump him or kiss her, or screw you too! Then she'd rest in the kitchen with a small glass of juice and talk on the phone, sighing, still breathing with gusto, patting her forehead with a damp cloth and proudly stretching her legs. Her daughter took bubble baths while I sat in the hallway outside the bathroom door and played folk songs on guitar, leaning toward the keyhole so she could hear me over those soap opera voices. Eventually she'd emerge, wrapped in a huge towel, and slip past me into her bedroom to dress. Of course I was eager to see her new outfits, to smell her perfumes and lotions and oils so I claimed I was writing love songs, out there in the hallway, and I played what snippets of pop tunes I could manage, from records I hoped she'd never heard, with such simple chords my clumsy fingers eventually sounded graceful, even musical enough to charm her into the love I imagined so vividly my singing grew strangled into a kind of howl, and my fingers, moving up and down that neck, grew sweaty and passionate. Poem by Michael Hettich