Clammy

Awed by the vision and the voice divine / ('twas no mere dream; their very looks I knew, / I saw the fillets round their temples twine, / and clammy sweat did all my limbs bedew) / forthwith, upstarting, from the couch I flew, / and hands and voice together raised in prayer, / and wine unmixt upon the altars threw. / This done, to old Anchises I repair, / pleased with the rites fulfilled, and all the tale declare.

As I stepped outside, the air felt clammy.

Nobody enjoys a clammy handshake.

His face was cold and clammy.

She could feel her skin growing increasingly clammy the more she thought about facing her fear.

All you get at the end is a clammy handshake.

At the end, all you get is a clammy handshake.

The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the streets; the rain fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold and clammy to the touch.

It was raining around noon, cold and clammy. There were eight of us family and friends at Crab Hot Lau, a Vietnamese restaurant in Vancouver, BC. I enjoyed the hot tea, having a fruity taste like lychee. The restaurant was crowded this holiday. I really enjoyed the pork wrapped in the leaves of the Piper lolot. My individual order was the Number 8: barbecued pork with vermicelli. I enjoyed also the square crab spring rolls. My mother made mango bars, which she brought to the restaurant for our dessert. Near the restaurant was the Serra Bar Café, a Portuguese establishment. It was the 25th of December of 2024, "Krismas" and the first day of Hanukkah.

After two in the morning, I was awake, trying to read an Interlingua book, Le torno del mundo in octanta dies, by Jules Vernes. But the lamp in the living room was too dim. I ate a few pieces of Italian round waffle-like cookies, pizzelle. I went back to sleep on the couch. Later, it was a drizzling morning, cold and clammy, this Boxing Day of 2024. I walked twice to the neighbourhood's Tim Hortons. Firstly, I ate two hash browns, whilst drinking an iced coffee with oat milk. Secondly, I ate a crispy chicken wrap with a glass of blackberry yuzu sparkling quencher. At both occasions, there were Eurasian children, and there were Filipinos that looked handsomely Japanesque. I was exercising with a hand grip strengthener at my table, as I counted to twenty in Esperanto, in each set: "unu, du, tri, kvar,..." In the afternoon, this Boxing Day of 2024, the sun came out of the clouds, the drizzle stopping for the while. An odd cabinet mirror stood by the sidewalk, so I could see my bare legs and mauve garden shoes in the reflection. I walked to Tim Hortons, there to drink an iced coffee with oat milk. The café was crowded. At night, I went back there to eat a roast beef and cheddar sandwich with an oat milk iced coffee. A brown family popped in to break the empty silence. A pensive white man said that I liked the word "blossom": Maybe, he was waiting for spring?