Six in the evening;
Spice hits the pan. Curry leaves pepper
the heavy, briney air.
Javan mynas roar
alongside the rumble of engines on the street,
each group receiving homing calls in their own direction.
I too am home, staring at the grey sky,
trying to remember how to fold along old creases.

A breeze pulls clouds along,
past the front door and out the kitchen window. Above,
cool-toned daylight will hold fast for another hour or two, stretching out
into a protracted dusk.
Plastic bags rustle as gates swing open and close.
There’s an even tempo to the days.

Six in the evening;
The rain tree pulls its leaves back
sensing darkness on its way.
When the drizzle
morphs
into a tropical storm, I imagine
slipping
through the gaps in the leaves,
riding the waterfall from head to feet;
water like a second skin.

I land on a giant nest of fern (bursting
between branches in this tree) and pull its leaves close
to shelter from the pelting rain.
From a distance, great cranes creak
in the monsoon wind, breaking
stillness after a day’s work
pulling steel twigs into the air,
stacking cubes into towers.

The last sunrays of the day begin to break through
the clouds, parting,
each going their own way almost as quickly as they came.
Back on the ground, sun-dried,
I feel a layer of skin crackle
and peel off my back.
I squeeze, scrunch, and press it,
fibrous and textured
like papery pulp, into the shape of my shadow,
smoothing out old marks, crossing like palm lines,
on the surface of my strange double.