MIST by Joy Dayrit

Joy Dayrit's Mist is so short and so quiet and so subtle that it is almost poetry. Here, hardly anything happens. A woman in a boarding house watched a male dancer practising in the garden path. "She liked his smell, the sweat after practice. The tang of it hurt her nose when she inhaled, and when it traveled to the base of her, it was pleasure." She takes a shower in the common bathroom. She inspects her body as she dries herself. Then she notices the door is slightly ajar and a shadow drifting across the opening. Or maybe it was no one. Just her own forgetfulness. Or maybe it was he.