Someone came visiting last night, as I lay under the cover, my toes still cold and my eyes barely beginning to make out the furniture in the darkness. She wore a pair of shorts and a loose T-shirt, her hair in a braid falling over her shoulder. She walked barefeet, lest her footfalls wake the others. She came and sat quietly by me, her weight resting lightly on the mattress. It was not a clear night outside, with patchy clouds pasted against a dark, starless sky. The blinds trembled gently in the breeze, as a tungsten glow from the neighbour's window made striped patterns on the ceiling. She sat beside me, looking at the nightness outside, as I did.

She liked nights like these - undramatic, mundane almost. She loved the moon too. And wrote poems in vain, trying to make the words feel the darkness, drink in the heady fragrance of the kaamini tree by the window, soak in the still, humid air, feel the cool window grill in her fists. She loved nights. When the dog downstairs would let out a stray bark at a feline intruder on the boundary wall, only to be hushed by the sleeping human (her head would rest again on her paws, but her ears strained to catch the slightest rustle and her hooded eyes blinked noiselessly). The glass of iced water would send condensing rivulets trickling down the window sill, the ancient fan whirring overhead, stirring the heavy air, a hidden lizard tick-ticking behind the wooden pelmet in search of its mate, the half-curtains hanging listlessly. She would sit, quenching the thirst in her throat with sips from the glass, but never the one inside.

Last night she sat beside me, looking at the nightness outside, as I did. And I knew she was not thirsty anymore.

...but I was, for that glass of iced water, the fragrance of the kaamini tree, for the dog's stray bark.