Spontaneous condensation

I inhale slow and deep

Imagining the oxygen in the air

grow heavy

Heavy enough to dampen

like a single lonely rain cloud

Then lay a generous drop on my parched tongue

Making waves with my arms

every time I decide it's too cold 

Or too hot

Or when my own pulse is too loud in my ears

Thinking about counting how long it would have been since I last saw sand

Felt it beneath greedy soles succumbing into the gravity of the low tide

158 days 

If my math is right 

Since I wore shoes

with socks

Or heels with straps

Held my hair to my ears

during a windy morning

auto rickshaw ride

Sipped cheap, overly sweet tea

from styrofoam cups

Out of a whim

From just finding a 10 rupee note from the bum pocket

Rode an elevator with perfume and body odour both wafting

Scents I can never place

but were familiar as the wind itself

Walked on a busy footpath

on the side of incoming traffic

Just for the thrill of it

And get much more than I would like to seek

158 days since I crossed any road

Seen the lazy yet loving stray dogs

Sat in an Uber

Used my trusty green umbrella

I hold on for too long in this thought canopy

I will will sleep

to barge into this insomniac mind

Despite the thirsty throat plus swelling bladder

But then I give up

Pry open unwilling lids tightly squeezed out of stubbornness

Drink that damn glass of water and empty my bladder

Get back under the covers

And the cycle, at my behest, begins again 

👵👴

Where with a sea view and vows we started our nuptials full of joy and plenty of pale ale

Now we slither into separate tiny cots in an oldage home forgotten with faceless nurses, the fabric of our skin, breadlike and stale

Where once we would play online chess through bites of cheddar sandwiches, our unwashed selves hidden through the internet's comfortable veil

Now we stand too close in this infirmary bath sharing soap, sliced through the middle, all thanks to your weirdly sharp big toenail

Where being puzzled and brainstorming in the middle of an airport terminal: was it egg or chicken that came first and why the chicken crossed the road or was it rail

Now we samba with fingers on the shared bedside table, my phalange chubbiness against your papery thumbs, until our eyes give unto sleep, surrender to fail

Where it started sixty seven years ago with me checking you out and began to end fifty nine years later when you checked us into this jail

Now every day is a Sunday repeated in shadows of sunsets I half remember as nice and you misremember as too yellow: sights from that boat left alone to sail