Kamna's Blog

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

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