Tropical Sky

 Four months the tropical sky above me, hazy, washed blue from horizon to horizon,

The sun, detonating in silent perpetuity, the heat bearing down heavily,

My life, the one I once believed I had,

A woman, mortgages, investments, the colour of my car, the surety of progress,

Has slowed, stopped, evaporated amongst the humidity.

These past few days I have slept, three, four hours in the afternoon,

Early to bed at night,

Up with the dawn.

No dreams.

And during the sweltering days,

Though sheltered on the porch,

My thoughts wither.

I watch a fly land in a patch of sunlight,

Streaming from a rusted hole in the tin above,

Land on a piece of paper;

It rubs its tiny hands together, then flies away.

The ants have come,

Clambered up my small table,

Scurrying where my cold drink has been, sucking up the sweat.

From outside the courtyard,

Drifting in from the still foreign quartier

I hear music, voices, motorcycles, grinding mills,

An ever present cacophony surrounding me

Though far, far removed from me.

Occasionally, the wind dancing in the banana fronds and coconut palms

Reaches across my porch and cools my skin,

The heat from the sun so intense

That I notice the smallest swirling breeze wherever it touches me.

I find, oddly, that I cannot think beyond what I see, feel, hear,

Even the wet taste in my mouth, slightly bitter from the tonic water I drank.

As though I was that person I once thought I was.

I seem to wish to find meaning in the pageantry around me.

But I find no meaning.

My thoughts stop at sensation.

As the person I once thought I was,

Appears to have stopped at being.

Or, maybe, maybe,

The I is just beginning to be.