Through the window grilles

A slash of cerulean cuts across the gradually lightening sky. Shadows slowly form on the walls of his spartan room. He glances at the window grilles and panes, mottled with a coat of dust. He blows some specks of dust dangling on the grilles, and they dissolve away into nothingness.

As dawn pushes the last remnants of night away, the first sun rays of the day reflect off the window pane, showing his reflection: haggard and drawn, a day-old stubble bedecking his chin.

He looks idiotically at the brightening sky. He looks at the clouds, clouds like candy floss. Tendrils of cloud, curls and swirls of cloud, interspersed with blue, black and pink. He craves some candy floss now. When he was a child, he would always implore his mother to buy candy floss whenever they chanced upon a mobile stall selling that. Alas, that was so many years ago, and his memories are now not so reliable and lucid.

Time holds no meaning for him in his prison cell of a bedroom. He could lie there or sit up painfully and look out of his window grilles at a world that is full of zest and life, but which holds no meaning for him. Life, for him, has no meaning. Meaning has filtered out of his life when she killed herself. Plunged down ten storeys, and him a sobbing wreck, standing by her side and screaming his lungs out. It was then that his hair had turned white. It was then when meaning and purpose had drifted away, oozed out of his life - like an artery that has its blood all drawn dry.

He sees some black birds flying in a formation across the sky, their shrill cries, jabbing his loneliness. The squares of the high-rise opposite slowly bustle with activity. He sees a man brushing his teeth. He sees a maid carrying out a bamboo pole full of wet clothing. He sees a light flicker on in one of the units, and then flicker off. He sees the colour of blue steadily suffusing the candy floss. He craves some candy floss now, and is it time for breakfast?

He hears a knock, and the nurse enters, bearing him his day's medication and a paltry breakfast of porridge. She looks at him bound in his strait-jacket, and caws, "You wet yourself again."