The mosquitoes are everywhere they weren't before. You can't figure out how they got in, every night you flush them out with coils that make you eyes stream in the bathroom. Everyday here they are again. Things wake you at night, dogs mostly, something that has found its way into the back space and kept rustling the leaves last night, like it was trapped. Early birds singing. The banana tree brushes against the glass on top of the back wall.
You shape your day around domestic tasks, basic cleaning that makes you feel pure and moral and kind of like a hippy . Handwashing, sweeping, cleaning the floors: squat over with a cloth because you don't have a mop. You could borrow one, but you like doing it this way because it makes you feel pure and moral. You iron. Badly.
One day you were feeling down, there was no water and you looked through what is supposed to be the second window in the kitchen. Instead there is a mosquito mesh and those blocks with decorative holes cut. Trapped between these two things was the perfectly preserved skeleton of a rat. Looking prehistoric and somehow wise, the long tooth giving it away, strange paddle shape on its front legs. Did it thrash around? How did it get there? Did it just get fat and never leave?
You like to catch the mosquitoes in your fist with a Zen like ease. But sometimes you miss.
