They turn the heaters off, I stiffen

January 13, 2012. I plant sunflowers furiously, my pointer finger trembling, striking down to harvest sunlight. The tencho music is sounding in the cafe, and Indian men chatter behind me, but I am focused, ready. The gas station is overflowed with dented cars and men carrying black briefcases, rickshaws standing in the waning angled light, curtains drawn around hiding passengers. I plant my first pea-shooter, and the screen changes. A pixeled Zombie, shaking, tongue hanging as he limps and strides towards my plants. You will be struck down, and I will reap a silver coin from your death, I think. Peas fire across the screen, the zombie loses first his arm, then comes quaking onto his knees. This one has a cone on his head, harder to kill, but my Starfruit, shooting happy yellow twirling stars from five sides, lights up the nighttime screen, and after waves, and waves again, I beat the level. 
Still traffic hums, birds flap through pale sky above tired buildings, and I break from my game to connect. 
Tea is served to me at placement in the room where patients with physical disabilities sleep. The green birds chirp, a woman named Lalita calls back to them, mimicking them, as they reflect her voice. They sing to each other, and I wonder if she envies them, those with wings, while she lives without three limbs. 
I sit on a yellow-sheeted bed and sip chai from an ivory cup, watching a man hoe in one of the gardens, watch through a dirty screen, watch the furrows grow from week to week, the plants growing and shrinking, watch, watch. I wash sheets, pink flowers dipping up and down and through clean water, now sudsy and rosy and grey, and my knees are soaked. My arms lift and lower, the muscles contracting and relaxing, the pair an inverse. Water slashes and splashes, and I lift leaking buckets into other containers, and my hands are clean after. 
I've been here a month and a half, away from home for four. 
My sweetest girl, Nazima, Nazima, the best girl, the best girl in the whole world, I sing to the fourteen year old, and she smiles, her eyes nearly shut, and I wipe the drool that snakes from the corner of her mouth with a faded bib.