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.