EW1

Pasir Ris.

The extreme east is no mystery, so let's just get its name out of the way.

I've tried everywhere to write this, from bus 21 to Bishan library to my workplace; but there's no better setting than my own bedroom. The photographs hanging on my corkboard are so still, which is strange, with how their flapping from the fan is the only thing I hear when I'm trying to sleep at night.

There's a gap between my colleagues and cousins, where the shots of you and I once resided. A few days ago you still hung there, for I was too afraid to look at or touch you. Why is his picture still there?, my older cousin was just scoffing, a few days after you left yet again.

This town is irony at its best, from the best classmates of my life to the worst year of secondary school. From the sweetness of childhood to the demons residing in my mind and bedroom. From a reunion kiss at my bus stop to one last goodbye at yours.

As much as I loved the expressway, I dreaded separating from you at Woodlands. The moment I took my next bus, once it touched down in this neighbourhood, everything was familiar yet dangerous. It got worse when you found a room here, a little after you got a job as a steward.

You were the key that locked me in the eight-stations box, from Pasir Ris to Paya Lebar and back again. I did not have reason to leave this octagon, not much, not when the only person I knew outside it suddenly resided four bus stops away.

Perhaps that was the reason I met your best friend secretly, on the fourth day of February. He held on to two bikes as I walked towards him, his left hand holding on to the handlebars of a stray Mobike. Maybe you don't remember, but when he posted a picture of his cracked screen on his Instagram? I was there when he dropped his phone, bending down to collect it as the green man started flashing.

He brought me around Woodlands, giving me a new perspective and a new scene in the novel I am writing. Down a hill towards the waterfront, where I kept up with him and rambled on about the colour red.

I had no guilt meeting you that evening, with the intricate lies I'd built up. I went to eat Eighteen Chefs at Nex with my family, my battery is about to die, I don't want to charge it because my parents will keep calling me.

My grudge was stubborn, and it grew with every image you posted on your story. I hated that you had the world on your side, that you had a whole life ahead of you. I hated being invisible in comparison, with the words that everyone who knew us didn't even say. I hated that you were right: being a writer will always be hopeless.

Somewhere along the way it became hatred for you. It all accumulated, going way back four years, when you left me behind. Another spot on the map that held both beginning and ending, Jurong East; the years following our reunion only turned my own hometown into the same paradox.

True, sometimes I loved you less than obsession. I loved you on bus 53, with my hand on your knee after a long day in training. I loved you when you said hello to a cat, when we bought your groceries, when you made us four packets of maggi goreng.

But I admit now that night, it all dissipated when you kept going after I said no. We lied in your mattress afterwards, where you quietly asked me, E'indah, do you love me?

At that moment, I did not. You remember my response: silence, loud enough to coax you asleep. I packed up and started to leave but it woke you, and while I was putting on my shoes, you quietly said, You don't love me, do you?

Our first time: Paya Lebar, in my home outside home. Our last: Pasir Ris, in your home outside home. Sometimes I didn't want to, but the word 'no' was never enough. 'I don't feel like it', 'I don't want to', 'I'm telling Luqman', none of it was strong enough to make you stop pulling on my pants.

For that one night, I didn't want to talk to him. I let the phone ring once, twice, then panicked and hung up. I wanted to talk to a girl. My cousin, my older cousin, my long-lost best friend from secondary school; they all flashed to mind. I needed a girl more than anything that night, but for some reason no one seemed right. I didn't want someone who would just baby me.

Soon they became your secondary school friends. Your ITE classmates. The girls you met on Tinder months before. I wanted to talk to them all. I didn't care about being told that I was the villain, or accused of hidden intentions. But the saddest part was you believed I had something up my sleeve, when one of those girls reported to you about me following her on Instagram.

I was never the victim, with the army behind you. I did tell your best friend (or was he still?), when we went cycling around the north; I warned him against saying Kau dah tahu dia macam gitu, asal kau pergi rumah dia? He spoke with disdain about how you would never change, but we all know that he will always stand with you anyway.

Pasir Ris, the town of irony. 

At the bus stop where I always take 88, we went from two kids talking about the past three months without each other, to a couple who refused to give in, eating their McDonalds in silence. 

In this very room I've stared at your number flashing on my screen, ignoring every sudden call. Less than a year later I was the one desperately calling, pushing the same familiar numbers on my house phone when you ended up blocking me. 

Here we are again, you deciding that you don't want me anymore. Me, trusting you for the tenth time for naught. Five years ago you were the reason I loved the red line with all I had, but even that ends in the south. 

The stations from the west to the east just gave us thirty-one more reasons to break up, sirens burning every time the doors closed shut. From our first departures at Clementi to the tattoos and drinks at City Hall, or the long legs I struggled to keep up with at Raffles Place and the girls you met for the first time at Tampines. 

Simply the entire line, where I would ramble on while you listened. Where I would mimic announcements only to have your hand clamp over my mouth. Where I looked out the windows in wonder and you stared at me, doubting if you could ever stay long enough to understand. 

On the red line we ignored the announcements that warned us of an ending in Jurong East. This time, the warning came a little too late, only ringing when the train finally departed the second last station. We didn't know what to do, stay or leave? Is the train at this platform for boarding?

In the end, I decided on the former and you, the latter. 

And then train service begins again, back to the west, only this time without you. 

After / Fire

The 'Isdal woman' was found wedged between rocks on a trekking ground known as Death Valley.

Her hands were positioned as if she was shielding herself from a few blows. Investigators found more than fifty sleeping pills in her system, not all of which had completely digested. But the strangest part, still with no explanation until today, was the fact that her front was completely burned. The family who found her said the smell of rotting flesh was overwhelming.

They found a suitcase at a nearby station that linked to her, and came up with a few theories, but the most popular one was her being a spy who had to saunter to and fro different identities to escape people who were trying to kill her.

They couldn't find a reason for anyone to set her face on fire. Suicide was plausible, with the thought of her being unable to pour gasoline down her own back. But the fire didn't explain the pills, and neither did the pills explain the fire.

I thought of it in my own personal way. A year ago, maybe more than, I was trying to find 'the perfect way to die'. I never thought about fire, because that was what I always thought I'm made of, but I thought of pills. Sleeping pills, as an ode to my love-hate relationship with sleep.

The authorities never thought about it personally, or in a way that defied, I don't know, common sense. I put on her shoes and understood, just a little, why she would have tens of sleeping pills in her stomach and be charred all down the front (if it was really suicide and not murder).

I wish I could talk more without spoiling my own book that I'm writing. But one of my main characters had to do something in order to take the next big step that she did, and it is only now, months after I wrote that scene, that I realise how parallel it is to my present.

The significance of fire is obvious, being the place that any regular person is afraid of. I was told not to be comfortable in it, not to hold on to sparks that could only cause trouble, not to be the flame that caught on people's hair and clothes. Despite doing all that, I never realised how dangerous it was. How dangerous I was.

For once, I want to hold the blame. But I have people telling me not to shoulder the weight, convinced that I am still the victim. Maybe they are still unfortunate enough to have not been hurt by me, despite being there from the time I was born. Maybe they just weren't in the sun long enough to be burned by it.

There is a reason for everything I write. I do this best because there is no one interrupting me, to tell me I am wrong or I don't make sense or that I was the victim. He is just a bird and IamfireIamfireIamfire

31/1/95

A time that revolved around Sunday morning shows
I was too young to have packed my own clothes
Your landline was my mother's only choice
To know what we were up to, our secrets and noise.

Come the years with your texts on a touch screen
Still nine months apart yet both seventeen
One grew up first but the other was ahead
She met Woodlands while all I saw was Red.

A family of five started arriving without the daughter
But the presence of the other boys doesn't falter
The north became our home yet we never crossed
With the other's void filled, we never felt lost.

A one-room flat and reluctant shaking of the hands
Hide the heartbreaks and ceasing true friends
The fabric of our skirts brush, your knee against mine
After three years on different tracks, the feet realign.

Over an absence the recklessness was caught
Only this time she is the first in thought
Despite the opposite roads where we grew far
We finally sing the same songs in her car.

The apple does fall far

Last night when I got home I didn't even bother giving salam. My mother was sitting at the dining table and she immediately went Wow, no salam, ni rumah Christian ke? Only this morning I started wondering why she had to use Christianity's name to tell me off.

It wouldn't be the first time. From as far back as primary school when we were watching Scooby-Doo together, I started liking the sound of Daphne's name. I said it again and again, before asking my mother why didn't she name me Daphne? She responded with a snap, Eh tak mau, tu nama Christian!

My elder brother and I fought a lot during then too. We were fighting about the computer one day, and I screamed until my mother came in and made him promise to let me have my turn in five minutes. He shouted okay promise! We all thought it was settled, until he brought up his hand to reveal crossed fingers.

He got a beating on the shoulder, before she told him off Alamak, jangan perangai Christian lah! It brings me to another flashback of her warning him during his rebellious stage about never ever getting tattoos no matter how 'bad' he gets.

If I bother thinking about it, maybe she meant to point out the western culture instead. But it is thanks to her little remarks that made me grow up looking at things differently. Why I never dared to touch a dog or visit a Christian friend's house.

My father wasn't spared, with the many times he caught me returning home without giving salam as well. One day he asked me, Do you have a lot of Chinese friends? Why don't you ever say Assalamualaikum? That was probably when I started questioning this weird disdain my parents have against people who aren't Malay/Muslim.

I've been living in a house where the people who tell me to believe don't pray. God forbids I even say a dog is 'cute'; little do they know I just touched one yesterday, a shaggy puppy who was so excited to see me. Little do they know I don't always check for a halal certificate before settling somewhere to eat anymore. Little do they know I have tattoos of my own, so cleverly hidden thanks to my cardigan habit.

Whatever my parents tried to feed me have all been voided, either spat out behind their backs or turned into waste in my own privacy. My mother's efforts and my father's money that sent me to religious classes have all gone to waste, simply because they fed me with the left hand. And the best part is, they don't even realise that they've raised me wrong.

When the world ended twice more

Let's try to make it the simplest I can.

It started with a missed alarm and realising I was late for work. Stock-take day, where we have to report at seven in the morning instead of the usual ten-forty-five. If you know me, that's my biggest nightmare: being late and/or not fulfilling what I was supposed to.

Everything that happened after still burns in my mind now. The call from a part-timer who left weeks ago, his name flashing across my phone screen. The meal my colleague was eating and the conversation we had. The t-shirt my other colleague was wearing, the one with the three aliens from the Toy Story franchise. Crystal clear like it just happened yesterday, even though it was as far away as another universe.

We left the store in the middle of the day, my China and Ipoh best friends and I. Bras Basah MRT was just ahead of us, and that was when we saw them: three tornadoes, lingering behind the station and staring right back at us. No, wait... I counted again. There were five, each about eight storeys tall.

Speaking as the subconscious: I felt the wind blow through my hair, I swear to god. I grasped onto my China colleague's arm, and that was when she grabbed us and we ran, taking shelter in the station. I watched backpacks and bicycles and bodies get taken in the meantime.

Somehow I made it to my home in Pasir Ris. My best friends were gone, though unclear whether I just lost them or they got taken as well. My only girl cousin from my mother's side was there, bringing in the laundry with my mother. I told them about what I had seen, five tornadoes that may or may not have chased me back. I didn't get to finish before they looked behind me and saw for themselves.

They must have grown a little more, because we live on the ninth storey, and they seemed to go higher than. It was enough to send my cousin and mother panicking, making them frantic with the laundry. Before we knew it though, one of the poles escaped my mother's hold and we watched it disappear among the tornadoes, just as well as swarms of vehicles.

We ran in but my cousin stayed by the gate and held her arms over it, yelling at us to run into the room. I didn't know what she was doing but my sister-in-law and her children came running out from the kitchen, so I just grabbed my nephew and followed them running into the bedroom.

I heard the cars banging against the window and some muffled screams here and there. By this time it was just me, my mother, my sister-in-law and her kids. My back was to the window because I didn't want to see or hear or feel or know. And then they said my name; I looked at them both and they pointed behind me, asking me to look.

It was right outside the window, right in front of me: the eye of the storm. The moment it paused I saw what it really looked like, with its metallic arms and red eye staring right back at me. This was what the hurricane looked like from inside.

My sister-in-law whispered to me, asking me to creep closer until I had a chance to remove that eye. For a moment I had a connection with this 'storm', resembling one of those alien things from War Of The Worlds. I stroked its face until my hand was so near its eye, but even then, I didn't grab it. The two women behind me start yelling for me to destroy it, yet I refused.

I got thrown back in time suddenly, like a flashback happening right there. It was revealed that I was a younger Audrey Hepburn in my previous life, with that iconic black dress from Breakfast At Tiffany's. I was somewhere in the 1960s, bustling about with all these girls and their beehive hair and little dresses.

It didn't take long before that fell apart. All the girls I was talking to previously ran away screaming, pushing me/Audrey until I/she fell. We fell into water, too deep to be a puddle but too shallow to be a pool. We looked up, and a tidal wave eight storeys high stared right back, waiting. It carried us, and the last thing I saw was Audrey Hepburn cuddling in the tidal wave, her face relaxed and almost in love.

I'm sorry if it doesn't make sense. I wish I could record everything. But I know a little of what it means, just that I will sound stupid saying it out loud.

NSL

Marina South Pier, the boy who wants to fly
Marina Bay, for the girls and 14th July
Raffles Place, she let go and said goodbye

City Hall, the gift of ink from my tattooists
Dhoby Ghaut, the girl with all the gifts
Somerset, the hunt for a perfect pair of shoes
Orchard, with its very unlikely views

Newton, where even a circle must end
Novena, made safe by a new old friend
Toa Payoh, for my long lost father
Braddell, the wide smile of a robber

Bishan, the first place a lost one goes
Ang Mo Kio, looking out subway windows
Yio Chu Kang, where I handed you the gun
Khatib, for the souls I allowed to run

Yishun, devoid of life yet full of chances
Canberra, just another blank canvas
Sembawang, finally some peace…
Admiralty, my one-month old niece

Woodlands, I want to fall for this town
Marsiling, the rest I can do without
Kranji reminds me of a whole other state
Yew Tee, where we no longer own this date

Choa Chu Kang, we were at our darkest
Bukit Gombak, you might as well be the first
Bukit Batok, say goodbye to our youth
Jurong East, it’s time for the truth

NS1/EW24

We have come to this: the last, but also the first. The beginning, but also the ending.

For years I thought this was the station I loved most. With its triple island platforms and winding tracks, it was easy to ignore the people pushing and rushing past me. Be it from the ground, in the bus to school or being a part of it on one of the trains. How I loved every single part of it.

The year I was turning eighteen, I came here for the first time. Half bangs that covered my right eye and a beanie to hold my hair in place. I was that sad girl, only just separated from someone who came to be the wind. Someone who actually loved me.

I prayed for years to find someone like this. I struggled through 2012, mourning over someone who didn't care, and finally found the light at the end of the tunnel: him. The one who brought me to the North-South Line, and the North-South Line to me.

After school we constantly came here, and it became a routine for me to send him off in 160, on to Johor. Or him to send me off in 197, back to my home in Paya Lebar. You could even catch a glimpse of our ghosts here, him in his ITE uniform and me with my bright blue backpack.

There used to be a Wendy's which we frequented. The way he slurped on his beef chili and always remembered my usual order. That one time when I opened the door a little too hard and it hit a lady standing at the side. Where we held each other's hands across the table, where I couldn't stop staring at him because I was so in love.

But walk a little further to the back, and you'll see a couple arguing. She can't let him go, her arms bound tight around his, but all he does is shove her off. She grabs his bag and runs away with it and he chases her, pulling on her arm.

It gets to the point where you want to step in and do something but you can't, because they're ghosts. The boy wins in the end, and leaves her to die. She sits on the stairwell where everyone passes by her, not paying her any attention. She can't stop crying, wiping her tears on that thin grey cardigan.

She is soon replaced with a girl in a pink butterfly t-shirt, six months older than the previous ghost. She isn't crying this time, but you can see the anxiousness on her face. The anticipation, impatience, nervousness. She finally perks up in your direction; the same boy passes right next to you and walks over to her.

He is in a white polo tee, ITE emblazoned on the chest. The commas appear at the top of his mouth when he smiles, while she grins until the fang pokes out the corner of hers. They hug, and it is a stark contrast to their fight just earlier.

They walk away and you follow, watching the boy shyly grab her hand. I missed you, he says, his voice echoing across and to you. You watch them sit on the two steps at the end of the atrium, where the escalators to the station are, sharing a box of kuey teow.

A train departs, making you look up to it and stare until it's beyond the horizon. By the time you look back down they are gone too, replaced yet again. She is now in a black cardigan and with short hair, while his hair is gone and he looks tanner and more muscular.

She's in tears again, but he isn't shoving her away this time. Instead he looks like he's about to cry too, looking at her in this state. You stand close enough to hear her say I miss her, until another train comes along and smothers their voices.

That train was on its way to the south, just like their relationship was.

He brought me to places all over and I obliged until in the end, I fell for everything else but him. He rendered me unable to love another human being. His leaving opened some doors that took all my soul to close, as well as the closing of the one door that I kept banging on until my hand almost fell off.

And I am so sorry, I have tried. But I will always hold a grudge, one that even I myself find hard to live with. I don't think anyone should ever love someone who, deep in her core, still hates him to his.

The train approaching Platform A will end its service at Jurong East Platform D. It was a warning all along, foreshadowing the ending that came to be. And we ignored it despite hearing it at every station prior.

His footsteps that walked towards me will never erase the ones that walked away. And that is the reason why the station I loved with all my heart came to be the one I hate with all my soul. Why the boy I thought was my saviour came to be the man that ruined everything.

NS2

Remember the aspiring pilot I was talking about, way back in Marina South Pier? We played this game where he would name a random MRT station and I'd tell a memory. The objective was to find one that I didn't have any in. He named this one so confidently, thinking that I hadn't been here before.

He's right, I hadn't, but I still had one thing to say. I told him about way back in 2013, when the wind and I separated at the station prior to this: when he called me immediately after, saying he alighted because he let out a loud fart and everyone was looking at him.

Soon after this memory I fell for the red line. More specifically, the tracks leaving the first North-South station. It felt like a new beginning every single time, whether I'm staring at them from bus 52 to school, or watching the way we intertwine from a train.

My only attachment here is the anticipation for the station before: my favourite of all. Southbound, a new beginning; northbound, back in time. Back home, if you would, even if I have never worked or lived here.

So in 2013 the only memory we had here revolves around farts. We were so young and innocent, laughing about it even long after. In 2016 we passed by whenever we had to go Woodlands, pressed up against each other because of the peak hour crowds. He would have his arms around my waist and mine around his neck.

July 2017 came, and we were back to passing by. It was only our third time meeting again after three months of not seeing each other. He was in an argument with the flower over text and I was there, feeding him answers when he didn't know what to reply.

The both of us were on our way to somewhere in the middle of the green line to fool around in a hotel room. Where we got drinks that tasted like shit, where we ate pizza and smoked on the balcony, where he slept with someone he loved more than anything and I, someone I couldn't anymore.

Bukit Batok. We ignored the announcement, continuing our conversation in 2016; reading the replies on his phone in 2017. Bukit Batok, it went again. Neither of us ever looks up or out the window here, because it's so insignificant. I come to attention only when it goes Next station,...

NS3

We started on a pier. One that wasn't even in anyone's acknowledgement until more than three years ago when it first opened. Maybe even then nobody knew about it, or cared. I was one of those people.

As our train took us back to the other end, we pretty much travelled through time too. From the city with our iconic Marina Bay Sands to a town with forests hiding abandoned war zones. And now here we are, another station and vicinity rich with history.

The only personal connection I ever had with this one was my bosses from the bakery I worked at five years ago, saying they lived here. I never even heard of it, being my pre-MRT-obsession era. And another honourable mention, of an old friend saying we should come here someday and sit somewhere we can look at trains.

It's home to the second and third highest natural points in the country, with the first being Bukit Timah. Imagine living here and not knowing about that, or caring. I wouldn't have, either, if this was where I grew up. I would probably have hated it for the same reason I now resent the town I'm living in. What a pity.

The closest I can get is through pictures taken by other Singaporeans who took the time out to explore. But reading these articles only makes me feel smaller and more trapped, within this octagon made up of the first green line stations.

Maybe someday I'll reach out myself and find some time to connect with herein, Bukit Gombak. As of now you are just my blank slate, despite being abundant with stories from the past decades. It is sad to admit that I still love these distant stations more than the side I grew up in, so you might as well be the first.

NS4/BP1

The train got no driver, was what my mother always used to get me excited about riding the LRT. Of course being a Pasir Ris girl my whole life, we were only closer to the Sengkang line.

She would rush me to the front seat where my younger brother and I could pretend to be the driver. That was my mother, always making sure we had the best experiences. Honestly at the time I wasn't very interested, so my brother had the honour of driving the invisible steering wheel.

Ten years later, I am the one who is staring out the window at the front, watching the tracks go beneath. On the other side of the country this time, on my way to a school where I would stick out like a sore thumb. His friends were so welcoming (I guess it's funny because they were from a hospitality course after all) but it wasn't enough to ease me into a sense of belonging.

The next time I visited this station, his white buttoned and long-sleeved uniform became a short one, and the hair he had to gel up everyday was gone. He got so tanned that I barely recognised him when I fetched him on his first bookout. I could see moles I never knew he had at the top of his head. We laughed, and it became a routine for me to pick him up whenever I had Fridays off.

On the other side of the spectrum, I was nearing a state of depression at the time. The point of vulnerability, battling my own emotions at home while he was here with his own fights beneath the blazing sun. We had our own demons coming to visit at night, the long-haired ghost by his bed and the crying baby by mine.

2016 was the light at the end of the tunnel, when he finally had his POP and I slowly picked myself up. I was with his friends, all of whom weren't making the move to look for him. I started walking in a random direction and that was when he appeared. I'm not kidding, but the people all around us split like the fucking sea did for Moses.

Choa Chu Kang, of white shirts and tanned skin. Of pale faces and dark minds. He practically grew up here, from a tertiary graduation to passing out parade. I was there next to him, seated at the front of our relationship and pretending to drive.

NS5

The name of this station means 'oil pond' in a dialect I've never heard of called Teochew. During the Japanese Occupation the village that once stood here was used to store oil. What is now just HDB flats all around used to bustle with farmers and their ducks and chickens, can you imagine?

They're all gone, replaced with a train station in early February, 1996. Fast forward seventeen years later, with a red and black train slowing down, a girl staring out the window.

We only visited once or twice back in the day, when his school was at the station before this. There was a fight about something so trivial and I stormed off, only stopping at this shelter outside the mall. He appeared smiling, as if already expecting me to stop, as if he knew I would never leave any fight unresolved.

Like nothing happened, he took my hand and brought us to the bank. He had to replace his card, because he lost his wallet for the thousandth time. I still remember the pace of the queue and the teller's face. She told him to key in his new PIN number, which he reached out to do.

It was six months after we got together, after he set these numbers as his phone password too. It meant a lot to him as it did me, because I wouldn't stop counting as each month passed. Our first year together came eventually, as well as another fight over something so unimportant. Enough to break us up two days later.

But we reconciled, and two years later he posted a picture of us on his POP, finally wishing us a 'happy third anniversary'. That swiftly got deleted after the second break-up, and now here we are again, our supposedly fifth anniversary.

It was spent on fights once more, until we both declared that we didn't want to care about anniversaries. No more. The years don't matter anymore.

110113, the numbers keyed in back at Yew Tee, circa June 2013. He changed his phone and lost his wallet again shortly after. Only this time he used another combination and the previous one was never used again. Just the same as how he lost me again and again until this date stopped being ours.

NS7

Another station that is neither my story to tell nor home to make. But if there's one thing I have the rights to say, it's this line that only I can see. Some unseen force that I know is pulling me back.

I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but even the inside reminds me of Johor. There is this vibe that reminds me of Larkin somehow, and there's no other station that can do it better than this. It has the same bustling crowds yet it just makes me feel like I'm in another state.

Maybe it's got to do with this being a terminal for the people going across the border. I never had any reason to go along, but the wind was always among them. Everytime I picked him up or waited for him, the queue stretching across the bus stop acted as a line that I shouldn't cross.

There's only one other memory, of the rose pointing out the window, showing me the stationary trains behind the fences. If not, I tend to avoid Kranji; there're all these invisible boundaries around it, like it's part of another world. It's even pulling me back from talking about it.

NS8

Wait, what school are you from?

I'm from Fuchun Sec.

Where on earth is that?

So began the time of my life.

I already decided Woodlands is the heart of the red line for me, with its madness and fragility. But this station now is more than that, and less, all at once. It's like the very blood that keeps running through your veins, so neglected despite its importance.

Most of my story revolves around this station and its surroundings too, both forgiven and ones that I can't let go of. From one last argument last March to when we sat on the brick ledge by the canal, just weeks after he turned sixteen. From listening to me cry about a break-up to being my pillar and the last good thing left.

This one is always hard to write about. I think we are the only ones who changed, while the bench we sat on and rock we lied on will always be there. As if waiting to bear witness again, like a third party witnessing a couple's every moment.

I never liked change, but there is this magic in parallels that only I can see. Like how in early 2014, I was the one who stumbled around crying for the wind, and then in mid-2017 it was him, claiming himself drunk and calling my phone thirteen times. And who was the witness to both? None other than this third party.

After five years it's finally getting old. They're both long gone, while I'm still here like a horse tied to the leg of a chair. It's ironic because they're the ones who grew up here, who cycled down and jumped over canals with each other. They went from two innocent kids to two guys drinking beer at the void deck, talking about this girl who ruined their friendship and everything in between.

I find myself holding back, the way this side of the town keeps me in place. I can tell every story from here but some pieces will always be missing. Also missed, if you would. Now on the very few times I pass I try to dismiss it all, ignoring the silhouettes and open spaces that I once thought I loved.

If I had to choose only one day from here to keep, it'll be the time in 2014 when I made rounds around here with neither of these boys. I watched the sunset from the town garden and waited until two trains crossed each other. I don't need any of the other memories, both sinful and innocent.

It's at Marsiling.

Oh. Which line is it on?

From yet another distant place with a blank slate, to memories that will always be at the back of my mind.

NS9

Every year for Hari Raya, my mother would bring us to visit the relative living here. It's been years since I last visited, but the house with its two storeys and the parking lot will always be familiar to me.

I even know how the mall by the MRT station looked like many years ago, it's all in my brain. I went there once with my mother, when we bought donuts and hid them in my uncle's lorry so the relatives wouldn't think we bought those for them.

The thing is, I don't remember ever being on the highway that I am so in love with today. As a kid I probably had my nose in a book, or simply sat back and closed my eyes, wishing the ride would end quickly.

At sixteen, I was with a boy from school, also one year younger than me. He was a budding photographer, while I was the girl obsessed with taking videos. I told him I liked open, wide spaces and he brought me to this place called a waterfront. That could have been the first time I came here as a teenager and without my mother.

At eighteen I returned, older and sadder. The one who brought me places was no longer my mother, but a boy I met on Twitter. I followed a stranger to some faraway place, how wise huh? It turned out to be the ride of my life.

For the next five years my story not only revolved around this boy, but all over this single line. To me the core of it will always be this town, where surprises and trouble and sin happen.

From a little birdie's first kiss to the beginning of him showing his hurricane side. From sitting in front of me while his best friend shared my seat, to occupying the one next to me, my space and heart. From being nothing more than a distant name to the town that made me fall for the entire red line.

It took me a while to realise its name doesn't only come from its immediate vicinity, but stretching out to the two stations on either side. I'm still not as familiar with it all as I wish I am, but at the same time I know I have no rights to get to know it.

I don't have school or work here, and the relative I always visited with my mother was never that important to me. Plus, the only reason I ever had to come here is now living in the same neighbourhood. He might as well have been the key that locked me in this octagon, the first eight stations of the green line.

It's a marvel even to this day, with the construction sites for a new line. It was always weird watching its residents walk around like nothing special. Woodlands, how I love you so, despite having no right. You aren't my home and never will be. I'll always be stuck in the town that I don't quite love, while you'll be stuck with the residents that don't quite love you.

NS10

Come anytime, we're family now, she said. I've never seen her without a smile. Always so warm and welcome, like the dim lights of a home. A stark contrast to my own mother, honestly, who is fierce and never true.

But admidst all their differences they have one thing in common: they are both your grandmother.

I can only imagine what their initial reactions were when they first knew about you. Nobody knew until your mother allowed your existence to seep through and out into the world. She didn't care what anyone else thought and just loved you for you, even though you weren't supposed to be.

When we first met I kept seeing you every day after school. But I didn't hold you, even after a lot of coaxing from both your grandmothers. How was something so small like a newborn so fucking scary?

You went home to the north, where your mother grew up in. So far from all of us, but we never hesitated to take a taxi down just to see you. It was also where I finally gathered the courage to carry you, finally relented and allowed my mother to place you in my arms.

Soon after I fell in love with you. Maybe I already did, but it was only after I carried you just fine that I dared admit it. We pushed you in a pram all the way to the MRT station, where I exclaimed to your mother, Oh, this is her first train ride! 

But it wasn't. She said it was your second, the first one being the time she took you to the polyclinic two stations before. That's also where you are having school now, in a mosque so close to another state's straits.

When I first knew you, I didn't want to believe it. I saw you and fell in love, then I held you and wanted to give you every good thing that I had. Maybe you won't grow up with me after all, but with your mother in Admiralty. This is my second letter to you, with many more to come.

NS11

I don't know where to start. Or end, for that matter. Marina Bay was a lifetime ago while the first station on the other end feels like a universe away.

Maybe I should have listened to you more. Or maybe I should have led a more risky life so I'd have my own problems to talk about. But it was always about you, you, you. Your perfect life that you were never happy about.

Now you're finally slowing down, but only because you can't stop talking about Yishun. We should have stopped there, we should have left Novena earlier, blah blah blah. It wouldn't have changed anything, but you're so delusional it escapes your head.

You keep yelling and coughing into my face, I'm not sure what's worse. I want to scream back but it was always hard finding my voice so I stand here, taking all your shit in. Waiting for you to shut up and collapse and die.

Watch me, you say. Before I can even think to answer you turn your back and leave, smoothly navigating through the crowd. Everyone looks at you, wondering who this dishevelled guy coughing like there's no tomorrow is. Nobody notices me, even though I'm standing right in front of the open screen doors and blatantly blocking their path.

That's who I always was. Just your sidekick. Everyone goes through me like I am just a hologram, while they look at you like you are a billboard, your face and name up in lights.

I stay rooted long enough for your coughs to fade away and for everyone else to disappear. It gets so quiet my heartbeat feels like an earthquake. Even the NS11 Sembawang sign is so sturdy and still, I find myself wishing it'll break and hit the floor with a loud bang. Anything to kill this silence.

NS12

There was a time when I didn't even know what the red line's name was. I called it North-East, because that was how stupid I was. Then came a time when the hurricane brought me on it and I knew its real name. Perhaps it was about half a year later that I finally knew more stations by heart. That I realised there were actually two missing stations.

At that time I read that its name was rumoured to be Ishak, though there's no trace of that anywhere on the net today. I didn't even realise they'd already started construction. It was only last December when I passed by that I noticed the weird shelters protruding out of nowhere, somewhere between Yishun and the station prior.

Being a station built on an already existing line, it'll probably have separate platforms just like Dover. Another station with train tracks in the middle. I can't imagine how difficult yet intricate it must be during this process. But what do I know? I can just wait and see.

Too bad for me I am nowhere near enough to watch this construction grow. It used to be nothing more than an unnamed plan, just a clean slate left empty between NS13 and NS11. Now it is Canberra, so far from what I expected. So far from me. I may or may not make any memories in this station.

NS13

I've always known bus 39. It passes the back of my house but I only ever took it to my cousin's and then best friend's place, both somewhere in Tampines. I dropped at the same bus stop to get to either because they're just across the street of each other.

I've gone to one end, being a constant loiter spot during secondary school. But the name of the other interchange that it terminates always intrigued me. Never been there, didn't even know which Line it was on. Maybe once or twice, because we had distant relatives living there. Just not enough for me to remember how this place looked, not enough for me to know my way around if I was ever abandoned there.

As luck would have it, being in a polytechnic on the other side of the country opened so many of these doors. Having friends who studied in Nanyang Poly helped, giving me chances to cross stations I would otherwise have no business in. In 2013 alone I came here several times, enough to know where the cinema and bookstore and all the other stores are like the back of my hand.

It is symbolic to me I came here with my then best friend I mentioned, all the way on the other side of her place. At that time I was living in Paya Lebar, so I didn't get to take 39 home with her but the train. A few days later I came again with another best friend, looking for a new pair of shoes for him. We separated on the platform, where both our trains came at the same time.

These two days were more than four years ago, back in the simple days of Year One. Just like old times the girl held my arm and I acted as her bodyguard, being a head taller than her, while the boy kept apologising because his hand wouldn't stop brushing against mine.

But the most life-changing memory that involves the holding of hands was my twenty-second birthday, with the one I called hurricane. I was still sceptical about him, after the hundredth time he left only to come bouncing back.

We watched mother!, a movie that he would never have watched on his own accord. I lived for its symbolism and couldn't stop guessing what it was about. He told me that for once, he was thinking hard about the meaning of a film, because it wasn't direct like his preferable movies always were.

He got me ice-cream from a claw machine, something I hadn't seen before. What an unnecessary waste of three dollars, but the laughter at his many failed attempts was what made it priceless. It was the simplicity of walking around that reminded me how easy it was to fall back into place.

In the past five years Yishun wasn't a stranger anymore. No longer just a name in pixels on the front of bus 39, but a place that against all odds was filled with chances. Sparks between two old best friends, a boy and a girl who would later like each other, and a flame and hurricane who reconciled after half a year.

NS14

If you're lucky, a train might rush right beneath you while you're on the expressway. Against all odds, it might even follow, right next to the bus you are on or car that you're driving. Either way, it's so mundane to you that you don't turn to even look at it for a second.

Maybe that's what makes you so ordinary too. And I feel sad for you, for all these trains in the world that you will never bring yourself down to admire. I will always anticipate the moment highway and tracks intercept, praying I am lucky enough for a train to run below me or at least in the distance.

But the most ordinary people will let a train pass and to me it's the same as letting go of a four-leaved clover. You let it escape like sand running through your fingers, thinking it's nothing special because it will always wound up beneath your shoes time and again.

It's sad when it goes faster than your bus, already disappearing while all that's left are the empty tracks. It reminds me of a boy who took the train at Yio Chu Kang, the both of us thinking I was waiting on the other platform.

I called him, I said wait for me, and rushed to where he was. He must have been somewhere in the middle of the reservoir, while the train far behind him carried me. It's still easy to imagine his face as he stared out the window, with the waters buried somewhere in his eyes. Behind him there I was, trying to remember a time when I wasn't in love with the view.

It brings me to a time five years ago, another boy with his arms on either side of me. We were younger and a thousand times more reckless, and it was my first time seeing this reservoir. I saw for myself that it was the furthest distance between two stations, and perhaps that was when I started falling for the North-South Line.

It was the same boy who ran rounds here, giving me the task of timing him. There was nothing else to do but miss another stadium stations away, where the tracks were in perfect view of whoever sat at the grandstand.

Khatib, where I wished the bus I was on would speed up and not let the train get away. Where the rose almost got away before I said wait for me, I'm coming. Where I helplessly watched the hurricane run around the stadium, constantly turning to see if I was still looking.

NS15

We've talked about this. I've written about it a hundred times and it's getting old. We've long walked away from here, considering how I've never had this in my routine and how you've graduated years ago. But sometimes, I feel pulled back. I know only I still feel this way, despite you being the one who passes by more often.

I don't believe in coincidences anymore. I think things will always happen for a reason. 

You said this on a hill seven stations before, in the dark and stillness of midnight. It makes me think of the many times we've crossed paths, enough for me to have difficulty brushing it off. From you calling me out at Boon Lay to you and your friends and I being the only parties walking that usually crowded path at Paya Lebar.

This station was another, right in the middle of the red, in the middle of the month. Twice, when we both popped out at the same time to walk beneath the sun instead. When I was with someone else but you jumped in like a wrecking ball breaking all the walls down.

But there were one or two intended moments that stick to my head too. Waiting for you before we took the train to town and looked for your shoes, and when we sat there for an hour, waiting for the peak hour to pass.

After school, even though my school was somewhere on the other side of the line. I still remember being in maroon and you in white with red sleeves. My mom bought this shirt for me, you were saying.

Countless trains passed but I hardly took notice of them with you beside me. You sat straight, while I had my legs up and crossed on the bench. I made you laugh more often than you did me, when I failed at a game you'd been acing.

There is also another memory from three years ago, when you were the only friend I trusted with a secret. Anybody wouldn't have known what to do, anyone would have been frantic. Nobody's life would have stayed the same if it happened to them.

Mine certainly didn't, but you made it easier just by being a friend. It was your turn to make me laugh, though your lending me a shoulder to lean on wasn't new. Overlooking your school in the dead of the night was what made me love you like a best friend, and it never really stopped.

Maybe Yio Chu Kang was where I fell and never quite got up again. When you laughed in the middle of all those trains, when you stared at me with your wide eyes on your school roof; I gave you the power to hurt me, and you never hesitated to shoot. Hopefully it's nothing more than a monument now, for you to reminisce polytechnic days and for me to reminisce you.

NS16

Three tracks for three parties, but it was never determined who the middle one belonged to. Possibly me, with the way I first came in between five years ago. Or possibly the hurricane, since the rose owns the tracks going Marina South Pier while the flame, Jurong East. Right?

He sat in the middle during the movie as well, passing my cookies to and fro. The rose bit on one and immediately regretted, with his hate for raisins. After the film we both leaned over and started talking across his lap. Despite being the middleman he must have felt so left out sometimes.

Our friendship always revolved around the most basic things, never anything great. You wouldn't catch us up on the high stools at bars, drinking our time away. Instead we'd sit facing the windows at a Subway, staring at the strangers leaving the hub. We'd go from talking about universes and afterlife to laughing about the stupidest memes.

Unknowingly, we always took turns being in the middle. There was never any friendship I wanted other than the both of them, where I was blessed with two kinds of best friends. The kind I would marry and the kind I would always easily talk about everything with.

But that was our last date as a trio, because barely a week later we all fell apart. One side of the triangle was knocked out, sending our entire formation crumbling down.

This train service will end at Ang Mo Kio. Sometimes the announcement goes, terminating the train at the middle platform. It never crossed my mind that that train service was our friendship.

NS17/CC15

The earliest memory with you, just the two of us, was back in early 2014 when I was figuring out ways to school from my Pasir Ris house. I hopped on the first bus that came along and took it right to the end, without a care for being late.

Before that there was always a third party: a hurricane, because you were the only mid-point from Woodlands and Paya Lebar, where I was staying at the time. We used to sit outside the gantries with our pizza bars, nestled between the other lost souls.

We always separated the moment we tapped in again, me towards the Circle Line and him, the North-South. My grandmother doesn't understand the concept of all these lines, so despite you being only fifteen minutes from her place, she always said Buat apa pergi jauh-jauh?! She doesn't realise that I've heard Change at this station for the Circle Line more often than for the North-South Line, because I am always on the latter.

Somehow, you became the first place I always end up, whenever I didn't know what else to do and where to go. Four years ago you were my routine, during the time I was getting over him. There were other shorter routes but I stubbornly loved going the long way, and that was through you.

A year ago it was the same, running away from him and to you. I found comfort in you, with my diary and a cup of iced chocolate even long after he left again. My grandma was right, you are so far away but I never get sick of that one-hour long ride, even with the same views over and over.

It's a whole other world with you, the moment we pass the park on your outskirts. It almost feels like home, even if I've never stayed here or have any relatives here, even with the crowds changing lines and forming queues for the trains during rush hour. Bishan, where I feel at home despite the sea of strangers.

NS18

If this is happening in the past, we won't be nobodies. We'd have the attention of everyone, alright. Staring and pointing fingers like we are an exhibit. We'd be animals, hopelessly staring out the glass of our cages.

We won't know what to do. Maybe we'd just be kids who somehow fell through the screen doors. Everyone's usual lifeless eyes would open wide, and maybe there'd be a collective gasp. What are those two boys doing in there, they'd panic.

The presence of people on the other side of the glass doors can only mean one thing. That it's happening in the past, in an alternate reality where the world is still fine, that a train is definitely coming. 

No one will be reaching out to us, or even frantic enough to seek authority. We used to complain about the trains being late, the screens stating 4 minutes or even 6. But we'd do anything to slow the next one down this time, a beast made of six carriages. 

I'd gather just enough balls to turn and stare once the headlights find my face. There's a last minute guess to what the last thing I see would be: the tracks, the stunned expressions, or the dusty sign that says NS18 Braddell. It so turned out neither, but the train's wide smile as it robs us of our lives.

NS19

For as long as I've lived, I've only ever seen him work at this place. Decades, it seems. At the edge of the bank he will always stand, in his police uniform and greying hair. A baton pokes out one of his holsters, though I find it hard to imagine him using it. That's funny since a huge part of my life revolves around him beating the shit out of me with a belt or hanger.

This is an old story but I was away from my family for the whole of 2013, so I missed a year with him. Both our egos acted as walls, until heartbreak from a third party finally knocked them down. I returned in early 2014, and it was just too easy falling back once the awkward hugs and tears were over and done with.

His colleagues orders bottles of cookies from my mother every Chinese New Year, so we grew to have this annual thing where she, my little brother and I would lug bags over. If not, I doubt we'd come anywhere near here as a family.

You can gauge from that how loose my tie with this station is. Yet somehow I will always remember my way around because it's that familiar. From the bookstore above the bus interchange to the lift standing out at the side of the atrium, nothing much has changed. The bright canary walls remain and the entire vicinity still thrives.

But we changed. I went from a bespectacled fifteen-year-old girl who kept looking down to an adult standing tall and straight. He went from handing my mother a fifty-dollar note to buy my little brother and I dinner, to having his money rejected for his lunch to be on me. 

We went from just a teenager and her strict old man to a daughter and father. Now I talk about the book I'm writing when I always tried so hard to keep my passion for writing from him. Now he talks about our family's problems, when he used to lie all the time to keep up his steel facade. 

Despite being one of the first stations to be completed, this is one I very seldom pass by. But just like a father I missed a year with, its winding ways and atmosphere will always feel like home even if we don't always lean against each other. I guess Toa Payoh is just like my father; the oldest station still standing and my oldest man still thriving.

NS20

This wasn't a part of my routine at any point of my life yet it unknowingly grew on me. (Or, I grew on it.)

I wanted to tell just one story about this station and then I remembered another, until ultimately I realised there's an abundance of tales. Some of which aren't mine, some of which may or may not be true, some of which aren't even in my lifetime or the universe I am living in.

There's a mix of everything here, from a history of Jewish cemeteries to devotion sessions at nearby Catholic churches. Its very name was derived from the latter; Novem, the Latin word for nine, symbolising the prayers said for nine consecutive days.

Ghost stories, involving coffins and phantom trains. Some even claim seeing headless apparitions especially during the last hour of service, because who in their right mind would haunt in broad daylight and peak hours, right?

But you know me. I'm a very personal soul, so the stories that hang heaviest are my own ghosts. Unresting pasts, unexplained dreams, unfulfilled promises.

I know a boy who had to make this place home, along with its crowds and shoving commuters. He didn't want to become one of them with their lifeless eyes and impatience. So he stopped taking the train, escaping getting swept with the floods.

I know another boy who had to make this place home, the smell of the hospital and the heights of the twin towers. Their collision was at its peak, and the thought of his ex best friend being just next door irked him. So he stopped working there, and is now about to soar even higher than the towers of New Phoenix Park.

I know two other boys who had to make this place home, living on the remnants of the dead. Their masks were their only protection, music and each other their only company. It took them a month to realise the stillness of the world outside the station's walls. So they kicked a door open and jumped down, their torchlights accentuating the train tracks.

Even with stories that aren't mine to tell, it's evident that Novena is home. A shelter, a safehouse, even when these boys didn't want it by choice. They managed to leave, but its platforms and crowds continue to thrive.

NS21/DT11

Thirty years ago you were structured, years before I was born. At only twelve meters deep, you are the shallowest of all underground stations. I never noticed even through any telltale sign, like short escalators and ceilings that don't rise.

The last time I saw you, the posters for an insurance company plastered your walls all over; everywhere I looked. Enough for me to associate you with that white outline against a red background. But I don't have the right to say that, as if I see you everyday, because it was only that once. I'm pretty sure the posters have changed ten times since then. Or have they?

People have commented on your flaws, like having to tap out to change lines. Your red and blue aren't connected, making the people who use you exit and enter through two different doors. But I love you all the same, letting myself go with the flow of all these strangers. 

They don't notice the illustration on your wall, an intertwine of past and future. Singapore in the year 2200, inspired by both your history and what will come next and next and next. 

Mention you and most people will think of your circus. You used to be one, until they scrapped it off your name. But what irony, because you keep ending. Your walls, your depth, your posters. Don't you? You used to be Newton Circus, but now you're just Newton. Maybe the art on your wall that keeps getting ignored will come true someday.

NS22

So it's a date, then.

No, wait, not a date. Just a meeting.

He said both sentences in less than ten seconds, as if reflecting the indecisiveness of his feelings for me. At one point a hurricane, at another nothing more than a sudden released breath.

This was late 2014, when I was only just discovering the world with me in it. When I finally figured out that he was the wind and sky and birds. 

I almost didn't recognise him because he looked so much lighter, in his face and weight. It was about five months since we last met and talked. Maybe I was lighter too, so I was able to look at him in a different perspective. It was so much easier to forgive back then.

He had on a light blue t-shirt and I was in grey, no cardigan. I'd described it as going back home to Pasir Ris after a year: the familiar outline mixed with something new. I didn't follow my instinct to run as fast as I could when he said You just can't easily forget someone you were with for so long.

The main objective of meeting was to follow him collect his pay, but that was exactly what we did not do. Instead we had Pezzo and took a weird elevator with only two buttons: the fourth and fifty-fifth storeys. Why is it so dark?! he exclaimed, but I could barely hear him with the air pressure kicking in. 

We both hadn't been there before, and I remember wishing there were other things we were both experiencing for the first time together. But there weren't. 

There were poems about clouds and wherever you looked there were just sky and skyscrapers. If only it wasn't an air-conditioned place but open, with natural wind. It would have made it perfect, with the hurricane running shy beside me. 

He only held my hand when we walked through the bookstore and never once did we kiss. And that alone made the entire day flawless for me. I wish it'd stayed that way.

Orchard, where we messed up our first few dates very early 2013. Where we fell back together almost two years later to mess up everything else. 

NS23

Late 2013: his school, in the middle of the red line. She came from hers on the green and they took the train to town together.

This was when feelings were none, be it for each other or for trains. Just two friends who happened to have a lot to talk and argue about. Two people who almost tore friendships and relationships apart.

It began to rain when they reached their destination, just about to cross the junction by the H&M building.

I have an umbrella!, he exclaimed, digging through his backpack while the drizzle fell on them. It took a while before he finally came up with an umbrella cover, announcing that he didn't bring the umbrella itself.

She still remembers the look on his face when he stretched the cover over his head, that fang poking out at the corner of his lips. They ended up running the moment the traffic turned green for them, raindrops soaking her pink cardigan and his moss t-shirt.

What was it they were looking for? Shoes. He needed a new pair of shoes, even though he had no money, saying he would come back if he saw something he really liked. They made their rounds along town, him taking every pair into consideration.

Late 2017: his vocation, in the middle of the red line. She came from home on the green, and they took the train to town together.

This was when feelings were gone, after spending weeks at their peak. Just two friends who almost. Two people who tore friendships and relationships apart.

It didn't rain when they reached their destination; in fact, they realised they alighted at the wrong station and ended up walking to the next.

Again, they were looking for shoes but not for him this time. He wanted to get her a belated birthday present, never forgetting the ones she bought him four years before. They made their rounds once again, her turn being picky with every pair of shoes.

You know if you get someone shoes as a gift, that person will walk out of your life, she was telling him, because she was abundant in superstitions like these. Since then they kept trying to run but to no avail.

Somerset, where they spent hours scouring for the perfect pair of shoes, only to get one somewhere else. She paid for his when feelings were none while he paid for hers when feelings were gone. And while his long broke, hers are still new, the gloss brighter than the futures they dared imagine.

Next station: NS22

NS24/NE6/CC1

You stand out because you are the only station with three lines. But maybe not everyone favours this number, since a third party will always symbolise treachery.

The rose and I were supposed to fetch the wind from Outram Park but we were late, having spent the day at the abandoned tracks and the bridge overlooking everything that usually swallowed us. We rushed to Dhoby Ghaut instead, where he was waiting and already starting to sulk. We were running late but he was thirsty, so he stopped me for a Boost. 

Remember how the smallest things stick and the most insignificant mean a lot to me? Somehow I knocked over my smoothie and it flipped on the counter. The way he reacted still burns in my mind, and it almost reminded me of when he caught me whenever I fell.

He asked if he could try mine, and took a sip right out my straw. In front of his best friend, he wouldn't dare, pretending to be grossed out at the thought of sharing something with me. It's funny, the way he kept trying to hide.

I remember the conversations we had walking to Cathay, where his best friend was waiting. She says you're pretty and you deserve better, he casually said. 

I picked the movie adaptation of a book I was just telling him about: The Girl With All The Gifts. Thinking about it now, it wasn't really his kind of movie and it was his birthday but he let me pick. Sometimes he degrades me with mean words but once in a while I catch a glimpse of his own willing kindness. 

His twentieth birthday will somehow always be my favourite memory of him. Not anything from before, when feelings were none; not anything from after, when feelings were peaked. It was the underlying compassion and all that we'd gone through with or without each other.

Where he hid his face by my shoulder when somebody on the screen was about to get killed. Where I hooked my arm through his as we walked; where I slid around on my sneakers and he asked how old are you already. Where I went on about what really happened in the book that the film didn't include and he had all his attention on me. 

We separated at the station, where he went home on his red line. His best friend was going back to his aunt's place at Eunos, so the two of us went on the Circle Line together. 

Dhoby Ghaut, the only station with three lines. Where I realised that I was the girl with all the gifts she could ask for: an other half and a best friend who meant everything.

Next station: NS23

NS25/EW13

I have no idea what his name is. But he has daughters, and was asking me what Teacher's Day gifts he could get for their teachers.

He had a fist on my stomach and I felt a little embarrassed at the way it vibrated at his touch. It was my first time but it wasn't even painful, just a little ticklish. What is the meaning behind this, he was asking, and I started wishing I spoke as easily as I wrote. 

But even if I told him everything he wouldn't understand my grief; he had two breathing versions of what I lost. While he was etching into my skin the date that she left, I wondered if he had tattoos symbolising his own daughters. If he did, they were probably their initials or birth dates, which was still a whole existence more than mine.

I came back a year later but he wasn't there. Another young lad tattooed my semi-colon, and he took a picture of it to post on their Facebook page. But it didn't mean anything because he kept silent the whole time, never asking me what this tattoo meant to me. 

Last April I returned, with a brilliant idea and a poly friend's rough sketch. My first tattooist was there, and we spent some time coming up with the final draft. I told him I wanted a triangle made of flames and roses and feathers, symbolising the friendship between the two most significant boys of my life and I.

The feathers were the hardest to render, until he eventually suggested making it a whole one instead. It fed me another brilliant symbol: that my hurricane was always made of just one chunk, unlike my rose and I who were made of different bits and pieces. My tattooist made some changes in the drawing on his computer until there it was: our love triangle, laid out before me.

This last tattoo was the most painful for me, physically and probably emotionally. I know it's painful babe, just tahan, he kept reassuring. It only reminded me of the voices at the hospital, telling me it would be alright when I was nearly screaming. I tried my hardest not to flinch even a little after that.

Again, he asked me what it meant and I told him the significance of each side. But I never got to elaborate; once again, I wished I spoke as well as I wrote.

I boarded the train at City Hall again three hours after I entered, with an aching shoulder and a broken heart. It wasn't even the start of this tattoo come to life.

Next station: NS24/NE6/CC1

NS26/EW14

Once upon a time I hated birthdays with a vengeance, almost for no reason at all. Those people are just black voids to me now, blank and meaningless. But there was one girl I still think of from time to time: I lost her several times, but thinking back, she was the one there for me nearly every birthday.

She was an artist, making art on canvases and the foam on coffee cups. Maybe she still is; I haven't heard from her in two years, being one of those girls who left in their train without me. She probably still thinks I was just being disloyal, which is fine with me. It was my fault for never telling her anything. 

Just like how a tiny rose watched the hurricane grow, she was there from my immature thirteen-year-old self to the pre-depression in 2015. It was just too bad that she never stayed longer, that I never held her back with me the way I always did. 

She got me iced chocolate on my nineteenth birthday, took a picture of me in my tight red dress. We were surrounded by strangers, office workers making their way down the escalators, where they tapped in and continued wasting their life away in the peak hour crowds.

We didn't take a picture together, but I remember what she was wearing. A flannel from Uniqlo; a few days later I got the same shirt, after she picked out the one in red for me. But come to think of it, why didn't I stay longer with her?

She held my arm as we swayed through the crowds, the way she did in secondary school. Her mother always called me her bodyguard because I was one head taller than her. We separated at the platform, as she made her way home while I went to Serangoon to meet my mother.

Raffles Place remained her workplace for the next... I can't even say because I'm not sure. We stopped talking. I guess it just became the last time and place she ever held my hand. 

Next station: NS25/EW13

NS27/CE2

Five years ago there were seven against the world.

Girls, a mix of artist and dancer and academic. One of them stood out for all the wrong reasons, with the accidents she spilled, be it the muffin she spat out from laughing too hard or the horrors she faced alone the year before.

None of them wanted to know. But they were playing a game where they passed a corn cob around in their circle, pretending it was a microphone and taking turns to update each other about their lives. She just had to tell them the one thing that made them squirm on the insides. She told them about Black.

They didn't want to know. You could see it clear on their faces, but the one girl who confessed didn't notice. She just wanted to let them know the biggest change in her life. Not school, or her boyfriend of eleven months, but the boy who was using her when she was down.

That girl regrets it now, looking at that very scene more than four years later. How could she be so blind? No wonder they aren't here anymore; they all took the same train and left, telling each other that she missed it on purpose and will not be thought of anymore.

Eight months ago there were four.

They weren't against the world, with no floods to make them huddle the way fire ants do. They weren't against each other either, despite the differences in their kinds of depth. One girl still stood out though, with the long scar down her left arm.

But their peace was made yet threatened with rounds of Uno, the grease from their pizzas making the corners of the cards oily. Just the day before they already spent twelve hours together, facing the same threats: unreasonable customers and mountains of stocks. The day afterward they did the same, keeping their picnic secret from the others who slaved away in their absences.

They took pictures against the sunset, with arms around each other's shoulders and waists.

Since then, two of these girls have resigned, finding other full-time jobs outside their safe little bubble.

The girl who stood out wanted to love those girls forever, but despite taking the same train, they still alighted at different stations. That was when she realised they will separate the same way she did with the six girls from years before. Who knew that their own differences came to be the flood that she thought missed them?

Six months ago there were two.

A boy and a girl, pasts so different and futures both bleak.

They stood beside each other for four years but never touched. The world could only end if they ever did. He meant everything to her but was about to wonder for the rest of her life if she ever did to him.

He carried her in the rain that afternoon, lifting her up so swiftly and walking with her in his arms. Nobody could stop them but themselves, and it was the hardest lesson she would ever learn: that the weakest thing like a vine came to be the tightest boundary to pull them apart.

For these two, the flood hit them hard and she tried to hold them both above the water until she realised he wasn't even affected by it. She Let him go, and he swam so smoothly because he never needed her.

Marina Bay. Where the seven girls danced in the darkness; where the four girls hugged in the setting sun; where the boy and the girl loved in the rain.

Next station: NS26/EW14

NS28

May; he was an aspiring pilot. I mean, he still is, but he's too far gone for me to refer to him as someone still here. I met him four years ago after a break-up; he was my friend's friend's friend. Well, it was technically the peak of my social life so I had a lot of that thing called 'friend'.

He isn't important, and neither is my story with him. But he still gets the credit for bringing me somewhere I haven't been.

The station itself was so devoid of movement that even the security guard was falling asleep. I told the aspiring pilot I had to pee, and I still remember the way he said: Are you kidding me? I also remember wearing my blue jeans, dark t-shirt tucked haphazardly into them and the navy sneakers the hurricane bought me a year before.

We went up the stairs to the pier, the sun taking its time descending. He said it was too bad for me, considering how the sky was purple and pink when he came alone a few months before.

The wind never once stopped disturbing us, ruffling his short hair and my locks. My hair was still long and I remember the way some strands flew into his mouth when the wind picked up. There was nothing special about him to me, just an air of mystery that I didn't want to solve.

Eventually he sat me down and told his life story, since he already knew bits of mine. Family, academia, rebellion. For three hours I didn't get to talk and just listened to him instead. What a rare occurrence, huh?

But he taught me something that still hangs somewhere in my head, like a neglected sticky note that will always be there, waiting for you to notice it and remember it again: that I was meant to float.

I know it sounds silly. But he was a pilot, dreaming of living in the clouds someday. It wasn't strange coming from him, and was the reason I refused to make up with my hurricane so quickly after he returned. He showed me that staying in one place won't do; keep moving, keep typing, keep floating. Don't make anywhere or anyone home.

That was the first and last time I ever went to Marina South Pier.

Next station: NS27/CE2

Selfish

How is it that strength is measured in the amount you manage to lift? It's weights for the boys and heartbreaks for the girls. You keep testing the physical and emotional pain you can endure, just so you can be admired for how much you withstand.

When I think about it, the heart is so fragile compared to everything else. How is it possible for it to be the strongest organ in our body? Yet the moment I am writing this, I lean against my desk but my heart pushes me away from it each time it beats.

The heartbeat is so strong that it'll reverberate through another person if he leans against you. Keep still, the both of you, and eventually no one can tell which beats are whose.

My heart has gone through most of it: excitement when my favourite cartoon came on. Anxiety when I had to give a speech in front of the class. Ache when the stupid boy I liked changed his Facebook status to 'In A Relationship'. Euphoria when the swing I was sitting on went ninety degrees from the ground. Fear when I woke up in the middle of the night with a force on my chest.

I've had my fair share of weight, nothing special enough for people to think greatly of me. Maybe from the outside looking in, the heat is barely felt because I'm the only one getting eaten by the fire. All they see are the fading scars, never the blood pouring out.

Despite everything, I think my heart still hasn't had enough. You know how some people are so adventurous for some reason, always with the need to travel and climb mountains, jump from cliffs and shit? I believe my heart is one of those people, always looking for 'fun' where they could possibly die.

We're both at our highest, waiting to be pushed off all over again. Or our lowest, if you're looking at us from another direction. I once read a story where an anchor dropped from the sky and a sailor descended, as if the sea was beyond the clouds. Since then I never really figured out the difference between peak and trough.

I'm sure everyone has heard about that Japanese method of fixing broken pottery with gold. I thought it was beautiful at first, until I realised the absurdity of it. I don't want my heart to be attractive, for people to seek shelter in it. Let it be drowned, charred, broken. Anything but beautiful.

Bleed red. Stay in a burning house until the flames turn you black. Swim in the deepest recess of the sea until you turn blue. I have put you through everything, but it is dipping you in gold that is the hardest. God forbid you ever become a heart of gold, filled with kindness and generosity. We don't have much left for ourselves.

Pregnant

If you had a chance to meet anyone, dead or alive, who would you pick and why? This question was always asked in my English classes, being composition prompts or journal topics. I never had a good answer, probably just naming some celebrity to thank her for the songs she put out.

After some thinking on the bus this morning and all my twenty-two years of living, I've found my answer. I want to meet my mother when she was pregnant with me. 

I want to know what she went through with me forming in her. What pantangs she disobeyed, thinking it wouldn't affect anything. When she was pregnant with my elder brother, she refused to eat rice, saying the smell made her nauseous. He grew up with some kind of condition where he's almost phobic of rice.

With all the differences between my brothers and I, I wonder what she consumed when she had me. Alcohol, cigarettes? Sometimes I convince myself she must have taken some drugs, for me to have grown up this way, unable to look at anything without exaggerating its ordinariness.

Was she tender with all forms of life, thus my care for snails and insects of all things? Did she walk straight all the time like a wild boar, thus my obsession with lines? Did she go swimming when she was a few weeks pregnant and nearly drowned, thus my wariness of water?

I can't help but wonder if she had some kind of depression having me. I know she was angsty with my elder brother, which probably explains his anger management issues. But what kind of thoughts did she have with me? Did it ever cross her mind to kill herself along with me? 

I want to meet my mother when she was forming me, because I wonder what she had to be like for me to be this way. Or what she had to go through with this eccentric life banging against the walls of her womb. I'd like to know if it was her pregnancy habits that made me like this, or my already existing flame that burned her from the inside, causing any of her high or depression or anger.

Red

There's only one artist I'd immediately recall when thinking of the colour red. In fact, that's pretty odd in itself, the act of pondering about a colour. Who does that? Colours have always been there, just the same as the air we breathe and the numbers we count.

But this girl made me associate her with red, especially more than five years after her best-selling album in 2012. She just released her sixth last November, where she constantly used the word 'golden' in her lyrics instead. It's like your body is gold; Deep blue, but you painted me golden; Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo.

Five years back during interviews, she was constantly talking about the relationships she had and the chaos that came with them. She talked about the colour red symbolising not only the roses and passion, but also the anger and bleeding hearts and fire. She said that a love is only right and real when it is not red, but golden.

I don't want to be that girl daydreaming about 'love' anymore, much like how this girl has grown out of her country songs revolving around fairytales. You found me and you're no longer a daydream, no longer the "you'll find someone better" that everyone was telling me about before I met you.

Five years ago today you became mine. You brought me out of my misery, out of my shell but most of all, out of the east. You're right, I will always blame you for everything that happened in 2015. For leaving in 2014. But I will also thank you for showing me the first half of the red line.

With all the passion and anger and betrayal that came with the red, you brought me the North-South Line as well. I grew to love Woodlands especially, even after you first left me. I took 168 for the first time, falling in love with the expressways.

Orchard and Somerset, where we had our first few dates. Your ITE and camp days, when I frequented Choa Chu Kang just to fetch you, then Novena when you worked part-time at Mount Elizabeth. I loved Woodlands the most, where I would send you off to 950, where we would sit beneath the tracks with our drinks and takoyaki and talk about everyone walking against us.

It wasn't all sweet, of course. Jurong East was where you dumped me for the first time, shoving me off your arm and walking away. Bishan, becoming the place I'd go to just to get away from you. Dhoby Ghaut, where I stormed off in anger after yelling Fuck you! in front of everyone. Marsiling, where you stumbled around the blocks, calling me thirteen times with no answer.

Back in 2012, I called the boy who broke my heart Red. I wish I hadn't, because he isn't worthy of it. He is an empty face to me now, a meaningless void that spat me back out when 2013 and you came along. I know it's stupid for me to revolve you and this relationship around an MRT line, but I have both of you to thank for everything.

Without you, there wouldn't be red and without red, there wouldn't be you. I love you, and I love the North-South Line. How I wish the both of you could intertwine forever, but now you're in Pasir Ris with me, caught at the furthest end of the green line instead.

Disgrace

Regret is always heavy, especially knowing you had the power to say or do something different. Something that could have changed your day, or someone's perspective of you, or your entire life. Today I'm heavy with my silence, knowing I had the authority to step in; only I didn't.

Working in retail for nearly three years, I've gotten the natural instinct to look up when someone says 'eh, excuse me' no matter how far or rudely it's called. This man's voice was so loud that I couldn't possibly ignore it; I thought it was a customer who needed my help.

But he wasn't calling me. It was a man standing by the Malay books shelves, his huge e-scooter thing parked next to him.

He started yelling at these two ladies, a pair I had served earlier when they asked me about calligraphy ink. The younger woman was noticeably timid, her voice and gaze low but never forgetting her gratitude. "Thank you so much," she shyly said earlier, still four words more than what most customers would say. She had an accent that I didn't recognise, very unlike my Malaysian colleagues with their Cantonese or the ones from China.

"Eh excuse me, you never see that you hit me is it?!" the man was yelling at them, the younger woman with a basket chocked full of supplies. She turned back to look at him, obviously shocked and confused.

"I never hit you." she said, loud enough for me to hear.

"What never hit? My thing drop what, what never hit?" he snapped back, referring to his stupid e-scooter thing that I always thought make their riders look ridiculous.

"I never hit, the thing drop itself." she answered, visibly confused. Her voice was still calm compared to his.

"What by itself?! This thing so heavy how to drop by itself!?"

And by then I was gone from their radius, instead walking in the cashier counter towards my Stationery supervisor. Even then I could hear his voice, repeating again and again: "Eh, this thing expensive you know! If break who going to pay!? You got money pay or not, huh!?"

None of my colleagues heard it because they all had their attention on their own customers. I was so busy concentrating on this argument in the distance that their voices still ring clear in my head, even til now.

I just continued helping my Stationery supervisor, packing the scanned items into bags while she made transactions. By the time I looked up again, I found that the next customer making payment was the pair of ladies I'd served earlier. I smiled and took the basket from her, and that was when our interaction was interrupted with the man's raging voice, already on his way out yet still tormenting this woman.

"Eh next time you walk you see in front! Bloody idiot. Eh this thing expensive you know, if break who going to pay?! You got no money pay one lah!" he keeps repeating it, oh my God oh my God, stop. And then he says something new: "Fucking idiot! Fuck you lah!"

And that was when I looked at him and saw how ugly he was and I wanted to do something when the younger woman's voice broke me out of my trance: "Do you have the camera here?" The way she said camera was unusual, like kah-may-rah, her voice still stubbornly calm and low. "This man keep saying I knock his scooter."

In the background all I heard was, "Eh fucking idiot! Next time you see in front of you when you walk, stupid bloody fucker!" and he turned to the person he was with and said, "Eh... benda ni mahal, dah pecah nanti dia ada duit bayar ke!?"

And all I did was snap at him Eh enough lah!, maybe the rudest I could have been to a customer, only for him to keep going on and on with his complaints and profanities and how expensive his stupid e-scooter is. And I wanted to spit on him, a man of my own fucking race.

My stationery supervisor was next to me, confused and only able to continue scanning the items in the woman's basket. It was only after the queue was cleared did I manage to tell them what I knew.

And I wish I'd said or done something differently for her and against him. I wish I'd intervened and told him to stop the moment it started, or shouted at him to get out of the store before I call authority, or just said to him not to tarnish our race's image. Anything at all. Anything but shut it out like a fucking coward.

I thought the man was a disgrace to our Malay society, but I guess that honour belongs to me. For not speaking up. For not helping her. For not doing things differently. For not intervening when I was the one in the store who had the power to. This will always be one of the things I will always think about, wishing I'd done something. It riles me up.

Years

2012 // 2013 // 2014 // 2015 // 2016 // 2017

The girl from my past who always cared
About the mocking laughs or being stared
Eyes glued to the floor and dragging feet
Cheap sneakers rubbing against concrete

The girl from my past with one eye hidden
Her friends moved forward but she didn't
Photos of their graduation put up on walls
She barely escaped the loop of school halls

The girl from my past recovering from him
Her metaphors filling her head to the brim
Discovering the world in roads and tracks
Came to be her last time above the cracks

The girl from my past with a second heart
Days at a hospital almost tearing her apart
The brightness of her sun fading over time
Robbing her own life, the next perfect crime

The girl from my past drowning in regret
Her second soul will remain an unpaid debt
Strained eyes against her world's darkness
Her worthless body in her fragile harness

The girl from my past burning her flower
Who found and picked her from her cower
The tornado not only carried her but threw
Over the lion city and life's unusual view