Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.
A diversion, a fork in the road. Or mouths that the river will split into during his infinite journey. Like how I was yours the whole time, just a distraction to get you by, something to pass the time until you could finally leave for the outside world.
Here is a station that everyone easily forgets. Nobody comes here on the weekdays, or when there are neither sales nor food exhibitions. You wouldn't come anywhere near yourself, unless I dragged you to a book sale.
In 2015 I went to a few without you; with my best friend who stayed by my bedside during the abortion, by myself when you were in camp. With my cousin, when you had other friends to entertain one weekend.
But my favourite day with you here was Labour Day 2016, when I still had my you, me, and the cat t-shirt that is missing today. You know about my strong memory, but how does it happen? How do these days stick to my head like they were just twenty-four hours ago?
It's easy, just use your senses. I remember the popcorn stand we walked by, which you couldn't resist. I swear I can still dig out some of the kernels that got stuck in my teeth. I remember the weight of all the books in the basket, which you made me put down and choose only ten.
The pictures: of you and the black and white cat, on that field by the mall near home. The huge plastic bag of books was resting on the bench behind me when I shot that, you in your dirty green t-shirt.
Your Snapchat of you and I, where you stuck out your tongue and I scrunched up my face; your caption, words on the banner spelling out balik yayy. Bring me on the train back to Tanah Merah again and I can show you which part of the route you snapped it.
But I don't want to go on the tracks this time. Stay in the hall with me, the rows and rows of books that excite me and irk you.
You know, sometimes this kinda warehouse sales got treasures.
I already found the treasure.
You got bored eventually, and when I didn't budge from your nagging and hurrying, you walked away. You went to the corner of the hall where a big piece of paper was laid out on the floor, for kids to doodle on for entertainment.
That scene of you looking over the railings and turning back towards me sticks for some reason. I was watching you, ignoring the stacks in front of me for a moment. It stung me some ways, about you and about the world.
At the time my depression was still growing, and I was in that in-between of finding zero worth in anything and trying too hard to be positive. I have diary entries from this time full of smiley faces and exclamation marks, but they are a contrast to the darkness that was coming on in my mind.
Just imagine: you, looking at that paper and, seeing that it's nothing of interest, turning to walk back towards me. I bet you don't even remember, What fucking paper, E'indah? But that look on your face made me so scared, I wanted to drop all the books and just hide in you.
If I could bring you back in time with me, only this time I want you to focus on my face, see the shock and fear in it. Why? I don't understand it myself. The world really scared me then, with its disabled people and lonely elderly and pathetic attempts at development.
It's hard for me to write and confess this, that I felt earthquakes just by looking at you look at paper. Imagine if I'd told you on the day itself; you wouldn't understand, you would shove it off with a sarcastic remark that would make me laugh. But I'd still go home and think about your face for the next few days, weeks, months, until now.
You're right, I have a crazy kind of intelligence.
A diversion on the green line. Like the books I drowned in to distract myself from the sad, sad world. Like the man whose hand I held to make me forget the people living in it, even when they pushed through me like I was a hologram. Expo, where pathetic exhibits breed my fear of the world.
Saturday, May 05, 2018
Friday, May 04, 2018
CG2
Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.
The ending and beginning, somewhere in the middle of the green line. On the edge of the diversion, where the train takes forever to leave with its travellers and heavy luggage. Where both arrivals and departures happen.
On your right is Candy Empire, flourishing with peanut butter-flavoured Kit Kat Chunkys. I was obsessed with them once, never failing to buy at least two bars to eat at the back of class the next day. Wait, you can actually see me paying right there, with a red and black-striped hoodie hanging on my shoulders.
Here is Dunkin Donuts, with its kiddie chairs by the fountain and just three booths. Here was where I drank coffee for the first time, after years of believing in its bitterness and being an 'adult' beverage. That's me in the middle booth actually, sipping on my iced coffee and scrunching up my face in disgust.
You're right, these two places are long gone. A toy store stands in place of the candy shop, while the donuts are gone, replaced with a Chinese cafe that seems to specialise in mango desserts.
But wait; before the Dunkin Donuts vanishes completely, your sixteen-year-old ghost brings it back to life.
I see you, but I can't quite match your real face with the mirror selfies on your Instagram. You finally approach me, without the snark remarks or pick-up lines that would come frequent over the years. You're prettier than I expected, five simple words.
An A4 book is passed over the table; your JAE booklet, very barely missing the ring of water left by my iced coffee. I've misplaced mine, and perhaps that was the only excuse we had to actually meet.
This was our only meeting which you actually remember what I was wearing, head to toe. Sometimes you bring it up yourself, asking if I could wear that striped blouse again. You say I looked cute, but grew prettier over the years. Another one of your lies, but one that I was fortunate and quick enough to see.
In my mind, this first encounter with you still feels like yesterday. This is nothing new. The entire five years that passed since then just happened last night, I swear. Close enough for me to feel every single blast of air-con that hit my face when I enter from the bus interchange, and the heat when I leave.
I know our memory is another one of our differences, that's why I'm taking you on this walk. God knows where you are exactly now? In a Burger King with your new girl, somewhere in the north? In some bar in the city, a reunion with your batchmates? Or perhaps you are right here, after another flight?
God knows if you are even reading this? I might be talking to myself for all we know.
Right next to the long-gone Dunkin Donuts is Starbucks, where a girl from my secondary school used to work. She happened to be on the counter when we visited, somewhere in March 2013. It was strange for her to be the first person from Pasir Ris Crest to meet you; someone unimportant with the one that my life would revolve around forever.
A few feet away is the giant slide that goes down a few storeys. It was the second thing that attracted you that day, after the girl in a beanie. But unfortunately I was just too shy to get on it with you, wanting to keep up my, you know, cool exterior.
Even the lifts are significant here, when we used our reflections to compare heights. Why are you a little taller than me?! you cried. That image and your voice both ring clear, I swear to God. There's the exit to the carpark, where we sat at when things got a little awkward.
And here is a regular door. Where does it go? We don't have the rights to come in, or the chances to ever find out. But when we walked in one evening in October 2013, you blocked the exit with your suitcase and led us to a corner where we could hide. The usual happened, you grabbed my face and kissed me.
After a while you told me that you did it because you genuinely missed me. You said that for once, you didn't feel lust. You just wanted to refill the gap shaped like me when you were away in Bali on a school trip. At the time I didn't admit it, but it was one of my favourite kisses that we shared.
Two and a half years later, we're back here. It's Labour Day 2016 once again, and you're walking with a bag of books in one hand, and mine in the other. We meandre through the crowds that scare me when I don't have you. And then you have a heart attack when you see someone you know: your mother.
Somehow she misses us, but my hand in yours and the holes in my jeans are enough to make you panic. I want to introduce you to my mum, you exclaim, but it contradicts the way you pull me away and quicken your pace.
You only relaxed when we got beverages from one of the old-fashioned coffee places. We sat on the viewing mall and drank, talking about the past when we first met, and the future, that we didn't know would get ten times harder.
That future would come November 2017, when you went on your interview for SilkAir.
You told me what you were planning to say, but I told you to scrap it because it implied you'd only settle for second best instead of fighting for what you want. I wasn't very smart to begin with, not with this interview bullshit, but when you made it through you thanked me for the advice.
I called my mom to see if she was working and if we could visit her; I told her about the chance of you being cabin crew, and I felt a sense of pride from her, just a little. Months later when you sent me a picture of you in your uniform, she was the excited one, showing you off to my aunt and grandma. Introducing you to her colleagues as her 'future...'. She was just obviously more proud of you than she was of me.
Already a contradiction to your mom, at her disdain for me just from what I wear. She doesn't even know you serve alcohol on your flights, and you know she'd be restless if she ever does.
No, scratch that. She doesn't know more about you than your job.
She doesn't know that you sometimes excused your prayers with laziness. She doesn't know about the things we did in your room on weekends. She doesn't know about the occasional drink you down with your cabin crew, or the cigarettes you smoke on a daily. She doesn't know you had a child that you didn't want.
But that's okay, because you're perfect.
When you went for that interview, I already knew you'd get in. A gut instinct? Faith in you? Or just that stupid metaphor I stuck with, that you own the skies? Maybe all of them. But there's also something else that I constantly believed would happen, that you kept telling me to ignore and stop mentioning. That you would die on one of your flights.
I doubt you remember, but we had a fight somewhere here. I left the canteen and ran to the viewing plaza, and you didn't bother chasing after me. I sat there alone, watching the still planes against the sunset, just plain bawling. I took a picture and captioned it can't look at planes the same way now.
There was a gut instinct that the airport would be the last place we'd meet; a closure to our first meeting more than five years ago. That a plane would take you away in all ways possible. It was so silly, I swear, but the god your mother believes in so much made me this way for a reason.
In a way, you did die by becoming someone else. My cousin with a steward for her husband warned me, but I told her you would never. I believed you when you made a face at the other stewardesses, saying their layers of make-up irked you. Trusting you was easier than ignoring my own insecurity.
Little did I know I was building you up for someone else to have you. I've done it both: carrying a child for five months only to kill it, and supporting a boy for years only for another girl to have my sculpture. I genuinely didn't believe I'd still have a heart to break at the thought of either.
I should have been warned with the flashes that came from your friends gushing over you being a steward. You never took me seriously when I called you Flying-type, but I still strongly believe someday you'll be hit by that same lightning you had when you departed. You can run away into the sky all you want, but with just a blink of one of its eyes, you're gone.
Now Dunkin Donuts finally fades away. So do the bus interchange, train station, and all the restaurants and planes in Changi Airport. You found me here at 16, with no muscles or money, and all you had was the trail of girls that rejected you in secondary school. Now here you are again, a finished product, firm enough to not need me anymore. Now those girls will be running after you, and now it will be your turn to pick from them.
On your right is Candy Empire, flourishing with peanut butter-flavoured Kit Kat Chunkys. I was obsessed with them once, never failing to buy at least two bars to eat at the back of class the next day. Wait, you can actually see me paying right there, with a red and black-striped hoodie hanging on my shoulders.
Here is Dunkin Donuts, with its kiddie chairs by the fountain and just three booths. Here was where I drank coffee for the first time, after years of believing in its bitterness and being an 'adult' beverage. That's me in the middle booth actually, sipping on my iced coffee and scrunching up my face in disgust.
You're right, these two places are long gone. A toy store stands in place of the candy shop, while the donuts are gone, replaced with a Chinese cafe that seems to specialise in mango desserts.
But wait; before the Dunkin Donuts vanishes completely, your sixteen-year-old ghost brings it back to life.
I see you, but I can't quite match your real face with the mirror selfies on your Instagram. You finally approach me, without the snark remarks or pick-up lines that would come frequent over the years. You're prettier than I expected, five simple words.
An A4 book is passed over the table; your JAE booklet, very barely missing the ring of water left by my iced coffee. I've misplaced mine, and perhaps that was the only excuse we had to actually meet.
This was our only meeting which you actually remember what I was wearing, head to toe. Sometimes you bring it up yourself, asking if I could wear that striped blouse again. You say I looked cute, but grew prettier over the years. Another one of your lies, but one that I was fortunate and quick enough to see.
In my mind, this first encounter with you still feels like yesterday. This is nothing new. The entire five years that passed since then just happened last night, I swear. Close enough for me to feel every single blast of air-con that hit my face when I enter from the bus interchange, and the heat when I leave.
I know our memory is another one of our differences, that's why I'm taking you on this walk. God knows where you are exactly now? In a Burger King with your new girl, somewhere in the north? In some bar in the city, a reunion with your batchmates? Or perhaps you are right here, after another flight?
God knows if you are even reading this? I might be talking to myself for all we know.
Right next to the long-gone Dunkin Donuts is Starbucks, where a girl from my secondary school used to work. She happened to be on the counter when we visited, somewhere in March 2013. It was strange for her to be the first person from Pasir Ris Crest to meet you; someone unimportant with the one that my life would revolve around forever.
A few feet away is the giant slide that goes down a few storeys. It was the second thing that attracted you that day, after the girl in a beanie. But unfortunately I was just too shy to get on it with you, wanting to keep up my, you know, cool exterior.
Even the lifts are significant here, when we used our reflections to compare heights. Why are you a little taller than me?! you cried. That image and your voice both ring clear, I swear to God. There's the exit to the carpark, where we sat at when things got a little awkward.
And here is a regular door. Where does it go? We don't have the rights to come in, or the chances to ever find out. But when we walked in one evening in October 2013, you blocked the exit with your suitcase and led us to a corner where we could hide. The usual happened, you grabbed my face and kissed me.
After a while you told me that you did it because you genuinely missed me. You said that for once, you didn't feel lust. You just wanted to refill the gap shaped like me when you were away in Bali on a school trip. At the time I didn't admit it, but it was one of my favourite kisses that we shared.
Two and a half years later, we're back here. It's Labour Day 2016 once again, and you're walking with a bag of books in one hand, and mine in the other. We meandre through the crowds that scare me when I don't have you. And then you have a heart attack when you see someone you know: your mother.
Somehow she misses us, but my hand in yours and the holes in my jeans are enough to make you panic. I want to introduce you to my mum, you exclaim, but it contradicts the way you pull me away and quicken your pace.
You only relaxed when we got beverages from one of the old-fashioned coffee places. We sat on the viewing mall and drank, talking about the past when we first met, and the future, that we didn't know would get ten times harder.
That future would come November 2017, when you went on your interview for SilkAir.
You told me what you were planning to say, but I told you to scrap it because it implied you'd only settle for second best instead of fighting for what you want. I wasn't very smart to begin with, not with this interview bullshit, but when you made it through you thanked me for the advice.
I called my mom to see if she was working and if we could visit her; I told her about the chance of you being cabin crew, and I felt a sense of pride from her, just a little. Months later when you sent me a picture of you in your uniform, she was the excited one, showing you off to my aunt and grandma. Introducing you to her colleagues as her 'future...'. She was just obviously more proud of you than she was of me.
Already a contradiction to your mom, at her disdain for me just from what I wear. She doesn't even know you serve alcohol on your flights, and you know she'd be restless if she ever does.
No, scratch that. She doesn't know more about you than your job.
She doesn't know that you sometimes excused your prayers with laziness. She doesn't know about the things we did in your room on weekends. She doesn't know about the occasional drink you down with your cabin crew, or the cigarettes you smoke on a daily. She doesn't know you had a child that you didn't want.
But that's okay, because you're perfect.
When you went for that interview, I already knew you'd get in. A gut instinct? Faith in you? Or just that stupid metaphor I stuck with, that you own the skies? Maybe all of them. But there's also something else that I constantly believed would happen, that you kept telling me to ignore and stop mentioning. That you would die on one of your flights.
I doubt you remember, but we had a fight somewhere here. I left the canteen and ran to the viewing plaza, and you didn't bother chasing after me. I sat there alone, watching the still planes against the sunset, just plain bawling. I took a picture and captioned it can't look at planes the same way now.
There was a gut instinct that the airport would be the last place we'd meet; a closure to our first meeting more than five years ago. That a plane would take you away in all ways possible. It was so silly, I swear, but the god your mother believes in so much made me this way for a reason.
In a way, you did die by becoming someone else. My cousin with a steward for her husband warned me, but I told her you would never. I believed you when you made a face at the other stewardesses, saying their layers of make-up irked you. Trusting you was easier than ignoring my own insecurity.
Little did I know I was building you up for someone else to have you. I've done it both: carrying a child for five months only to kill it, and supporting a boy for years only for another girl to have my sculpture. I genuinely didn't believe I'd still have a heart to break at the thought of either.
I should have been warned with the flashes that came from your friends gushing over you being a steward. You never took me seriously when I called you Flying-type, but I still strongly believe someday you'll be hit by that same lightning you had when you departed. You can run away into the sky all you want, but with just a blink of one of its eyes, you're gone.
Now Dunkin Donuts finally fades away. So do the bus interchange, train station, and all the restaurants and planes in Changi Airport. You found me here at 16, with no muscles or money, and all you had was the trail of girls that rejected you in secondary school. Now here you are again, a finished product, firm enough to not need me anymore. Now those girls will be running after you, and now it will be your turn to pick from them.
Thursday, May 03, 2018
EW3
Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.
I remember when you first came. When, for the first time in years, family and relationship intertwined on a positive note. I grew up rebellious, sure, but the shelter from my parents contributed to that. Mention a boy when I was sixteen and they'd have a fit.
I barely even talked about you, but they knew I was dating someone: the boy who made me pregnant, to be exact. Your shyness was nothing new, but add that to the fact that my entire family knew what happened in 2015. It made you so much more nervous, maybe a little scared, at finally meeting them for Raya.
You and your best friend were the first guests to arrive, leaving enough time and space for them to interrogate you. My grandma especially, wondering where in Johor you lived, what were you working as, where did you graduate from? It was just as well your best friend wore black, because he was just your shadow.
That wouldn't be the first time your name floated around my grandmother's mouth. Sometimes she mixed you and my cousin-in-law up, most of the time actually. Armar balik Johor hari ni? Eh, Armar pulak, 'Aamir!, her most frequent question, possibly even her biggest concern. She didn't like that I was always sending you to Woodlands, being one of those people who think north and east are worlds apart.
You came again in August that year, when you followed me to yet another book sale. I bought a whole box of books which you had to carry, and we Grabbed/Ubered (could never tell the difference) to my place where I could settle them down so we could go out again. My mom was home, and she made you come in and ate the nasi lemak she just made.
Shy again you were, but welcoming again she was. Ambik nasi lagi ni, 'Aamir!, she ushered from the kitchen, while you were just blowing at each spoonful because the rice was still burning hot. She asked what our plans were, and you said we were gonna watch a movie; Train To Busan, to be exact. I went home to Paya Lebar that night, and my grandma was already teasing me, Tengok wayang ke?
You were gone for a year, though your name never became a stranger in both households. From their disappointment at you leaving to 'date other people', to our shots from the photobooth at Causeway Point. Your existence never quite left, right until the day you came over for my niece's birthday party.
Again, you were centre of attention, even more so than me. My grandmother just loved fussing over you, knowing every nook and cranny of your life and routine. Maybe she just gave up on getting to know me, with the way I constantly shut her out. Sometimes I loved that you were my direct opposite, that you could fill the holes that I left behind in my own family.
I remember you sitting next to me, stabbing at your burning hot chicken wing. When my father finally arrived after work, and the way my mother pointed you out to him. The way you countered their enthusiasm by offering to get more ice and walking out to the Fairprice with me to get four bottles of syrup.
You were there for one last birthday celebration, for the two other boys in my family that I still cared about: younger brother and nephew. You took control despite the chaos, putting down everybody's orders in your phone notes so we could order easier. But the biggest deal was you having to go home to Johor late because of us. You sacrificed time with your own family to be with mine. I know, I saw it, and I appreciate it.
Maybe you forget time and again the way I always gave you chances after each departure. Maybe you think nothing of that, but surely the way they constantly accepted you rings a few bells. Which other family would ignore your flaws and mistakes you did on their daughter?
But you're right. All this happened two stations down. What's it got to do with this one?
That last birthday dinner was actually a belated celebration, because my mother was hospitalised on the actual plan. She had some kind of diarrhoea on our staycation to Johor the week before. Stayed in for a few days, making you miss both our dinner and a trip to Malacca with your own family.
You wanted to see her down in Changi General Hospital, but my grandmother's shallowness and old fashioned mind stopped you. You just sent me to the MRT station here and went back home, letting me walk alone and hearing my mom nagging to call you to come back. My parents were both on your side, mad at my grandmother for her selfishness.
They all thought you would stay in the picture, as did I. They closed an eye on your mistakes, already loving you like their own son. I'm tearing up right now writing this; as proud as I have been my whole life, sometimes they are still my weakness. It pains me more to admit this, that they have imagined having you in the family more than I did.
You can say whatever you want, you can let your pride take over and say that they just wanted to exploit you of your great son-in-law qualities. But the way they talked about and to you is worlds away from your own mother's perception of me.
My mother never cared about how much you earned, despite the way she kept joking about the fifteen thousand, because she knew I wasn't worth that much. So different from your mother, labelling me from the clothes I wear and don't wear. Not knowing how imperfect her own son is.
Simei, the mid-point of your old house and ours. Where the middle-aged couple defended you, insisted on calling you to come back, talked shit about their mother/mother-in-law being so shallow. I'd like to think it was your loss, not mine. You escaped a family that already loved you despite everything, while I escaped one that already looked down on me for my exterior.
I remember when you first came. When, for the first time in years, family and relationship intertwined on a positive note. I grew up rebellious, sure, but the shelter from my parents contributed to that. Mention a boy when I was sixteen and they'd have a fit.
I barely even talked about you, but they knew I was dating someone: the boy who made me pregnant, to be exact. Your shyness was nothing new, but add that to the fact that my entire family knew what happened in 2015. It made you so much more nervous, maybe a little scared, at finally meeting them for Raya.
You and your best friend were the first guests to arrive, leaving enough time and space for them to interrogate you. My grandma especially, wondering where in Johor you lived, what were you working as, where did you graduate from? It was just as well your best friend wore black, because he was just your shadow.
That wouldn't be the first time your name floated around my grandmother's mouth. Sometimes she mixed you and my cousin-in-law up, most of the time actually. Armar balik Johor hari ni? Eh, Armar pulak, 'Aamir!, her most frequent question, possibly even her biggest concern. She didn't like that I was always sending you to Woodlands, being one of those people who think north and east are worlds apart.
You came again in August that year, when you followed me to yet another book sale. I bought a whole box of books which you had to carry, and we Grabbed/Ubered (could never tell the difference) to my place where I could settle them down so we could go out again. My mom was home, and she made you come in and ate the nasi lemak she just made.
Shy again you were, but welcoming again she was. Ambik nasi lagi ni, 'Aamir!, she ushered from the kitchen, while you were just blowing at each spoonful because the rice was still burning hot. She asked what our plans were, and you said we were gonna watch a movie; Train To Busan, to be exact. I went home to Paya Lebar that night, and my grandma was already teasing me, Tengok wayang ke?
You were gone for a year, though your name never became a stranger in both households. From their disappointment at you leaving to 'date other people', to our shots from the photobooth at Causeway Point. Your existence never quite left, right until the day you came over for my niece's birthday party.
Again, you were centre of attention, even more so than me. My grandmother just loved fussing over you, knowing every nook and cranny of your life and routine. Maybe she just gave up on getting to know me, with the way I constantly shut her out. Sometimes I loved that you were my direct opposite, that you could fill the holes that I left behind in my own family.
I remember you sitting next to me, stabbing at your burning hot chicken wing. When my father finally arrived after work, and the way my mother pointed you out to him. The way you countered their enthusiasm by offering to get more ice and walking out to the Fairprice with me to get four bottles of syrup.
You were there for one last birthday celebration, for the two other boys in my family that I still cared about: younger brother and nephew. You took control despite the chaos, putting down everybody's orders in your phone notes so we could order easier. But the biggest deal was you having to go home to Johor late because of us. You sacrificed time with your own family to be with mine. I know, I saw it, and I appreciate it.
Maybe you forget time and again the way I always gave you chances after each departure. Maybe you think nothing of that, but surely the way they constantly accepted you rings a few bells. Which other family would ignore your flaws and mistakes you did on their daughter?
But you're right. All this happened two stations down. What's it got to do with this one?
That last birthday dinner was actually a belated celebration, because my mother was hospitalised on the actual plan. She had some kind of diarrhoea on our staycation to Johor the week before. Stayed in for a few days, making you miss both our dinner and a trip to Malacca with your own family.
You wanted to see her down in Changi General Hospital, but my grandmother's shallowness and old fashioned mind stopped you. You just sent me to the MRT station here and went back home, letting me walk alone and hearing my mom nagging to call you to come back. My parents were both on your side, mad at my grandmother for her selfishness.
They all thought you would stay in the picture, as did I. They closed an eye on your mistakes, already loving you like their own son. I'm tearing up right now writing this; as proud as I have been my whole life, sometimes they are still my weakness. It pains me more to admit this, that they have imagined having you in the family more than I did.
You can say whatever you want, you can let your pride take over and say that they just wanted to exploit you of your great son-in-law qualities. But the way they talked about and to you is worlds away from your own mother's perception of me.
My mother never cared about how much you earned, despite the way she kept joking about the fifteen thousand, because she knew I wasn't worth that much. So different from your mother, labelling me from the clothes I wear and don't wear. Not knowing how imperfect her own son is.
Simei, the mid-point of your old house and ours. Where the middle-aged couple defended you, insisted on calling you to come back, talked shit about their mother/mother-in-law being so shallow. I'd like to think it was your loss, not mine. You escaped a family that already loved you despite everything, while I escaped one that already looked down on me for my exterior.
Wednesday, May 02, 2018
EW2/DT32
We're finally at the second last, before we enter the black hole that you always thought my hometown was in. I still remember the day you fetched and told me that the stretch after this station just made my home seem like a different world.
As usual, I can name you every movie we've ever watched here, which of the three malls exactly. The photographs still hang on the walls of my head, even if they were long deleted. From the benches we sat with our hotdogs from Gogo to the corners where we hid to kiss.
Here was another one of the places we reconciled. Since when was there a Boost here? I exclaimed, with your hand in mine on a Saturday morning. You'd just ended your night shift at Cantonment and I was supposed to fetch you but it was one of the rare occurrences I was late.
I didn't know either! Rara showed me. Her cousin was working here.
A smoothie bar. A stranger making our King William Chocolate and Lite Mango Magic, that's all, and yet she is now contributing to the story of why we broke up.
This was somewhere in late July, after I had to let both the rose and my anger at you go. You once accused me of my disloyalty in Year Two, when you said At least I stayed loyal to you the whole year, while you fooled around with so many guys.
But last year it was you, with your girls on Tinder that became my snakes instead. You claimed they were just rebounds, forcing yourself to move on from the 'love of your life' that you yourself dumped like she was nothing.
It was too easy getting blinded by you again, with our smoothies and your trash talk about the girls you fooled around with. There was a song whose lyrics we fought over at the bus stop, when you said it was So say goodbye and disappear, while I was absolutely sure it was actually So say goodbye and hit the road.
Of course I was right, like I always was, like you always refused to admit. I was also right when I said you would leave again, but you veiled over my eyes with your sweet talk. The same tongue that I fell for, again and again despite the way it sends me crashing every single time.
We took 168 back to the north, and on the way I showed you my diary entry from the day you called me thirteen times. Oh how the tables have turned, I snickered, while your heart broke at the other entries from when I was hopelessly in love with your best friend.
It was when the bus entered the expressway did I let go of your hand to entangle my earphones. I didn't offer to share, the way we used to on our first few dates. I relented, but only if it was the playlist called 29/9, just to show that I still wasn't yours. I looked out the window instead of sharing my thoughts, something you were strange to.
We passed IKEA, sandwiched between the past, where we wandered with thoughts about a house we could never afford. The near future, where we would buy pillows and towels before you moved in your new place. Our ghosts weren't ghosts like they will be, but memories we recalled together.
It is here that sits a community hub, where you sat beside me while I edited my poems. Where I sat beside you while you watched football on the huge screen. Where we sat with our legs up and microphones to our mouths, screaming Taylor Swift at the top of our lungs as promised.
Woodlands was always dear to me as it was to you, your home more so than home. This station and its entirety is the east equivalent, from the amount of time I spent at my cousin's and secondary school best friend's place, and the mall that is now closed for renovations. A second home that will never be, with its ever moving crowds and vastness.
But it is also here that you find someone new each time, with the girls in photographs, graduating from this same polytechnic. It is here you meet them, over coffee or cereal or conversations so mundane that you wondered why you settled with my eccentricity for years.
It is here that you let me go, on with your life like I never existed. Maybe someday it will be my turn, back to the days in my youth when I hadn't met you. Back when my time revolved around cousins and girlfriends and the lack of money in my pocket.
Tampines, where the crowds don't stop moving, slew of passengers alighting the train until I am the last one in the cabin.
Now the train departs yet again, only I finally have enough space to turn in my seat and look out the window. The bit of dread in my heart doesn't change the fact that I am nearly home.
As usual, I can name you every movie we've ever watched here, which of the three malls exactly. The photographs still hang on the walls of my head, even if they were long deleted. From the benches we sat with our hotdogs from Gogo to the corners where we hid to kiss.
Here was another one of the places we reconciled. Since when was there a Boost here? I exclaimed, with your hand in mine on a Saturday morning. You'd just ended your night shift at Cantonment and I was supposed to fetch you but it was one of the rare occurrences I was late.
I didn't know either! Rara showed me. Her cousin was working here.
A smoothie bar. A stranger making our King William Chocolate and Lite Mango Magic, that's all, and yet she is now contributing to the story of why we broke up.
This was somewhere in late July, after I had to let both the rose and my anger at you go. You once accused me of my disloyalty in Year Two, when you said At least I stayed loyal to you the whole year, while you fooled around with so many guys.
But last year it was you, with your girls on Tinder that became my snakes instead. You claimed they were just rebounds, forcing yourself to move on from the 'love of your life' that you yourself dumped like she was nothing.
It was too easy getting blinded by you again, with our smoothies and your trash talk about the girls you fooled around with. There was a song whose lyrics we fought over at the bus stop, when you said it was So say goodbye and disappear, while I was absolutely sure it was actually So say goodbye and hit the road.
Of course I was right, like I always was, like you always refused to admit. I was also right when I said you would leave again, but you veiled over my eyes with your sweet talk. The same tongue that I fell for, again and again despite the way it sends me crashing every single time.
We took 168 back to the north, and on the way I showed you my diary entry from the day you called me thirteen times. Oh how the tables have turned, I snickered, while your heart broke at the other entries from when I was hopelessly in love with your best friend.
It was when the bus entered the expressway did I let go of your hand to entangle my earphones. I didn't offer to share, the way we used to on our first few dates. I relented, but only if it was the playlist called 29/9, just to show that I still wasn't yours. I looked out the window instead of sharing my thoughts, something you were strange to.
We passed IKEA, sandwiched between the past, where we wandered with thoughts about a house we could never afford. The near future, where we would buy pillows and towels before you moved in your new place. Our ghosts weren't ghosts like they will be, but memories we recalled together.
It is here that sits a community hub, where you sat beside me while I edited my poems. Where I sat beside you while you watched football on the huge screen. Where we sat with our legs up and microphones to our mouths, screaming Taylor Swift at the top of our lungs as promised.
Woodlands was always dear to me as it was to you, your home more so than home. This station and its entirety is the east equivalent, from the amount of time I spent at my cousin's and secondary school best friend's place, and the mall that is now closed for renovations. A second home that will never be, with its ever moving crowds and vastness.
But it is also here that you find someone new each time, with the girls in photographs, graduating from this same polytechnic. It is here you meet them, over coffee or cereal or conversations so mundane that you wondered why you settled with my eccentricity for years.
It is here that you let me go, on with your life like I never existed. Maybe someday it will be my turn, back to the days in my youth when I hadn't met you. Back when my time revolved around cousins and girlfriends and the lack of money in my pocket.
Tampines, where the crowds don't stop moving, slew of passengers alighting the train until I am the last one in the cabin.
Now the train departs yet again, only I finally have enough space to turn in my seat and look out the window. The bit of dread in my heart doesn't change the fact that I am nearly home.
Tuesday, May 01, 2018
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.
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.
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.
Monday, April 30, 2018
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
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
Saturday, April 28, 2018
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
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.
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.
Thursday, March 15, 2018
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.
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.
Thursday, March 01, 2018
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
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
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
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,...
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,...
Monday, February 26, 2018
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.
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.
Sunday, February 25, 2018
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.
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.
Saturday, February 24, 2018
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.
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.
Friday, February 23, 2018
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.
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.
Thursday, February 22, 2018
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.
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.
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
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.
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.
Monday, February 19, 2018
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.
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.
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