Balcony Diaries 2

The winter is sneaking up on us. You can't feel it yet, but you can see it in the haze over the river, speeding through the DND, invariably late for class, stuck in a rut and listening to the same songs. You can smell it, those flowers whose name I don't know but who bloom in our lungs among the smoke and fog every winter. The smell eludes you if you breathe too deeply. It's still blazing hot in the day and we complain about why the winter just.won't.get.here but soon we'll be lazing like cats in the sun, on the back lawns, eating wai wai.

I'm standing on the balcony pulling my shirt close around me, watching the moon do her dance with her ashen milky veil of watercolour clouds. It's been a while since the celestials blew their radiant puffs of smoke our way. It rained today, hailed even. And now I'm dancing to What Difference Does It Make like a Breakfast Club kid at an Osho Ashram. Little Mario clouds are strewn all over the sky and they constantly realign as I gape, craning my neck. I'm swaying like the branches of the trees and I'm gonna be carried up from my island of mental self exile. The sky pauses for a second, the clouds stop moving and the moon passes through a never before seen Rorschach test of burnt silver. I realize I'm doing all this pause play in my head. The clouds pass and I can see bright star again. The moon, almost full, stands away from him but not aloof.