Kathmandu

Sun in my mind smog in my lungs I smoke a Surya cigarette left on the inside of a windowsill, dust it off and light it up and stare at two long-tailed cuckoos on the powerline, they are dusty and cleaning themselves like I try to do yet remain bathed in a dust bath bowl of a city. Monsoon clouds make me restless and I cannot decide if now is the time I can leave the house without an umbrella, constantly planning the next downpour instead of my next meal my appetites fades in the heat and I’m maladjusted to dahl and cheap wheat doughy bread rolls from the German bakery. I sit on my bed and dust off on sheets, creases in my arms creases of dust I forget to scrub in the shower and perhaps from a distance I look tanned. Slap my leg a mosquito moves faster than my reflexes and it’s another red bump on my ankle, malarial or an itch, malarial itching I coat my scratches from a cheap broken metal mop with iodine and now my arms look tan and scurvy is near, stand afar under your umbrella it won’t break as there is no wind to dry off my feelings of stagnant dissatisfaction from living and working in the same building. Taxi through closing night past Bir Hospital and see the alley I walked through 6 years ago, clothes stalls are the same but Chinese imports have been updated now there are smartphones in the market. Motorbikers receive phonecalls mid-drive and stuff their cellphones underneath their helmets, held by the strap “hazur hazur!” they cry over the din of tooting. I smell sulfur I smell sewage I can’t breathe deep without the smell putrid in my nose and reassuring me my windowsill cigarette has not dulled my sense of smell. I type a message to a past lover and the internet cuts out and it isn’t delivered a good thing, right? An abandoned building next to me creeps with overgrown feelings of loss at never being lived in, it’s bamboo scaffolding on the top floor holding up a concrete heart roof. I want to squat in the building on the third floor and hear rains clear through the windowless window and feel dust washing away back down the drain. Kids approach me and ask for coins or momos and I duck into the first shop I can and ask how to say ‘no, I have no momos’ in Nepali, a beautiful man exits the shop, smiles at me, gives the children five rupees before leaving on his motorbike, can I see you again? Unlikely in this city where no census can record the street kids and their lost mothers selling buff milk in tin tea cups for pittance amidst smoky fires from sweet corn shielded by old saris.