Hours pass.
Mother jiggles pills in her cupped hand.
The coloured stones
clink
clatter
clank
as in the palm of a beady-eyed buyer
at a mineral expo.

Hours scrape by
like the pills mother chokes down
her parched throat.

The sands prescribed by physicians
and pharma-cartels
shape mum like a Gobi dune.

Mum's morning marbles
are washed down with gulps from The Nile.
The Yangtze sits chilling in the fridge
next to bottles of Po.

I find her at noon
recovering pearls like Ama divers
crunching them like seeds
and moaning that the sea
is dry.

I count the hours
Mum can't call to mind.
I count the pills for her
and the hours wither by.