The paucity of words doesn’t hurt me anymore.
I have spent a lot of time in my grammar classes and
With some half-muted friends in our defunct WhatsApp group
Or for something not worth mentioning here.

I would rather describe this morning in a different way,
In a different language without the usual vowels and consonants,
In a new language of broken sounds and innocent laughter with occasional sobbing.
It may trigger some response from the dizzy flowers of the roadside plantation,
Some quick and meaningful gesture from the ageing birds
From the balcony of the deserted house of the old city
I had left many light years ago.

From the day I have started forgetting things,
Names, phone numbers, date and time
I knew I will need a new language to live at peace
In this new world with a slow dying brain.
But believe me,
The babbles of newborn babies are getting more meaningful now.
The murmur of leaves,
The sound of ancient river,
Horse’s whisper, the changing colour of the long summer night
Look easy to my eyes and ears.

But amongst the ruins of my battleship,
I will never forget that letter,
The last handwritten letter you had written to me some sixty years ago.
Those painful words still hurt me more than my arthritic left knee,
Like a sore that lasts beyond time.
Your faint smile never eludes me and floats like a pale white cloud in the horizon.
And the passive reluctance of your gesture
Reminds me of a cobweb in the window of the asylum,
Where a robotic nurse had planted
The picture of a starry night near the bedside mirror.
I was able to make a great escape from the hell,
But lost my name and identity for a while.
But still I have saved some money to feed myself
With breads and banana, few cups of tea,
With occasional eggs and
Some old music stored in a stolen mobile phone.

Forgetting is not bad…
It is a new learning tool to those without baggage.
A life without medicine, without love, without dignity,
But with more freedom like a lone fox dancing in moonlight.
Some blurred images come and go
With the approaching dimness of a wooden lantern,
Where acceptance is  the rule and the ruler is unrecognizable.
But a secret desire remains…
To touch your pale and dry lips only once
With my frail index finger
And to say a last goodbye to the world of rational words,
And then disappear like a powerless vulture
From the  land of carcasses to my last journey into oblivion…