She's lying face down on the bed. I can almost see tremors running up and down her back. Her skin looks washed out. Someone forgot to mix the right colours before painting her. She doesn't know I am here.

I walk over and stand next to her. "I can start if you're ready." I say. She turns her face to me and I see bags under her eyes. They are dark blue, nothing like anything I have seen before. But her eyes are dry and steady, they look at me and through me with the kind of determination that comes with having been down too long.

"Do we speak first? How does this work?" She asks.

"It's really up to you."

"What would you do if you were in my place?"

"I really can't say. It's different for everyone."

"Yes. Which is why I asked about you."

"I wouldn't be able to talk to someone who I have met for all of two minutes" I say and turn to put on latex gloves that smell strange.

She rolls over and lies on her back. She's thin, but has a bloated stomach. It looks diseased, a festering tumor or something as morbid. She looks at me looking at her.

"I have been on medicines for it." She says and runs her fingers over the bump. There's something peculiar about the way she touches it. It isn't how a woman touches her pregnant stomach. It isn't fear or concern. The closest you could come to making a comparison is if you saw a half naked touching a snail in his backyard; repulsed but curious.

"You've mentioned that to our doctor, right?"
 She nods.

"Should I start?" I ask and take a deep breath.

"I guess I won't speak then." She says and rolls onto her front.

When I touch her, there is a small cry. Like a bird. "It hurts." "It's meant to."

Then there is silence. She is asleep for a couple of hours. When she wakes up, I am sitting by the side, reading the newspaper. The gloves are discarded in a bin nearby.

"I feel different." She says and sits up.

"Good, it's working then."

"My friend said that after she was done, meaning done with the whole course, she felt a lot lighter. Like something was lifted off her chest. Will I feel the same way?"

"You may or may not. It's all really how you interpret it. You came to us because you were guilty of something. You strongly felt you deserved punishment. We just do the enabling. When it's done, you might feel better. But you might not."

" You mean I may feel worse?" She sounds mildly alarmed.

"Not worse necessarily, but not better. Some of the people who come here end up feeling really disgruntled. They feel that penance in general doesn't help anything. Didn't your friend tell you this? I was informed that you didn't need any briefing."

"What do you mean penance in general?"

"Say you are a ten year old. And you forgot to water the plants while your parents were on vacation. And the plants died. And to teach you a lesson, your parents burnt all your books. You obviously will remember to water plants the next time because of the scarring punishment, but you develop a feeling of hatred towards your parents because while the punishment fit the crime, it was misguided and the books you loved so much are now gone."

"So, it wasn't my reading that caused my carelessness towards the plants."

"Yes. Hence the anger."

"I might end up feeling like that at the end of this."

"You can stop now. We're only halfway through."

"No. I'll go with it. Some punishment is better than no punishment."

Then she falls asleep again.

I leave the room and lock it behind me. When she wakes up, she'll be alone. By the time, it kicks in, I'll be home watching TV, oblivious to the thought of retching sounds inside the room with white walls. The memory of this woman and her innards coiling and re coiling will be put away as I fall asleep under my pale blue sheets.

My grandfather once told me a story about his friend. His friend worked as a paramedic during the war. He told my grandfather that strength isn't holding a patient's hand as he dies. It isn't saying something comforting to the bereaved while you are in shock yourself. It is when you can order spaghetti at a roadside restaurant and eat the bean sauce without picturing brains that spilled out of the soldier's head earlier that day. And if in that case strength means indifference, then so be it.

At the edge of a field, we are sitting cross legged in the grass. Our backs are hunched and our faces are caked with a day's worth of grime. We are too tired to sleep. We are too wiped out to talk. We have just enough in us to sit by each other under the sky and look at it. We let our thoughts take over and soon enough, eyes wide open, we lie on our backs.

In the morning, we wash our faces with water that smells of metal. Our smiles are sparkling clean. We leave like thieves, quick and light footed. After a bit, our pace drops and we trudge along. Our footprints in the soil are fleeting, they look real for a bit and disappear under a gust of wind. 

By noon, we are barely recognizable. We are two little dots against the bare expanse of a rural town. We have no place to be and no place to stay. Observed from a distance, we have covered some distance but we haven't reached anywhere at all. 

By night, we are gone. We were never there. And that can't be argued because nobody saw us. We were our only alibis and we aren't there to confirm it. 

The moon is beautiful tonight.

It's wrapped up in its enigma, a halo and a yellow-and-white overcoat. When I walk home I look up at it and it holds my attention. It lends itself easily to poetry. Or to something that is special. A thought, a feeling, a memory of a time when you fell asleep in the moonlight, your fingers laced through another set of fingers. 

I wait and look at it for a few minutes. The houses are all quiet. The people are pursuing their night-time activities in silence. 

There's just me and it's an interesting moment, of being alone and insignificant yet one with a sudden surge of hope about everything. 

The long writing hiatus has left me feeling exactly how I felt before it started, so it's safe to say that it wasn't particularly worthwhile, although I would have loved to pretend that it had some profound outcome.

There are books to be read and exams to be given. There are stories to be told, and documented, not because they are special but because they could be a few years from now. There are 5 km jogs to be completed, despite twisted ankles and seemingly major excuses about everything that helps silence my conscience about sleeping through workouts. There is an ambitious year ahead to be taken on with enthusiasm and determination, so as to enable me to be in a position to stand at the end of the road with satisfaction and not guilt.

There is more writing to be done. Everyday. It's important to write, mostly for oneself. I have to sleep knowing I wrote. Some days the writing is private. Some days it's less private. It's hard to believe this when you see people around you biting and snatching things, but the competition is with oneself.

Dreams of the inane variety.

Eventually I stop at a shop on a quiet road.
It isn't anything special, but it's a pretty afternoon and I stop to buy myself an umbrella. They don't have umbrellas they tell me, and give me funny looks. It's clear that it's a grocery store. The man at the counter peers at me, with large pitiful eyes. He asks me if I'd like something to eat.

They think I am homeless, I think and look at myself. My clothes are frayed at the edges. My feet are small and shapeless in the over-sized slippers that I am wearing. "I am not poor, I don't know what's wrong with my clothes!" I say. They point at the door. "Have some bread if you like, but we don't have anything else for you at the moment." I start to walk away and as I do, the man glowers at me and shuts his shop. The clicking of the lock has something final about it, like the end of something that had the potential of being significant.

I walk towards the end of the road, but the end doesn't come for a while. I give up after some time and walk back. There is no shop. It's just a different road now.