He sat by the edge of her bed
Holding his breath
Trying not to smell the stench of approaching death
He watched her shrivelled skin on the hospital bed
The dozens of tubes that crisscrossed her veins blue
Her whole body seemed bruised, a deathly pallor
Unable to sit a moment longer, he got up
He could feel the bile in his mouth
With his clean white starched handkerchief
He covered his mouth
Struggling to overcome the threatening hiccups of vomit
He remembered not the sweet smell of her perfume
That he’d loved as a child
Her smooth skin that he had loved touching
The folds of her sari where he had played peek-a-boo
The arms that had rocked him to sleep every night
It was a past long-forgotten
A woman he’d left behind in his childhood
He walked to the door of the hospital room
And looked back at the old woman lying on the bed
He nodded to the doctor
‘I have to go. Office work’, he said justifying
‘Just let me know when she…..’
He left the sentence hanging as he walked away
From his grandmother, dying
Relieved to breathe the fresh air outside
The fresh air, fleeting, that the youth breathe