heights

There was absolutely nothing special about roads up until my second year in poly. Before that, they were just long, winding snakes that cars and buses used to get places. Nothing great about that, right? Somehow, it was that ordinariness that took my wonder.

Leaning my head against the window always felt like home, both warm or fogged up glass. There was intimacy even in the vastness of highways, with earphones shutting your thoughts and music in. Anticipation for trains to run across the overhead tracks, like not knowing where a boy's hands would go next.

I went so far as to calling it home and seeking comfort, crying as 88 took me down TPE the way one would only dare cry in solitude. I thought nobody else would love them the way I did, even if I didn't know the way around that much. Another obsession for something so mundane, like loving the sun amidst the crowd complaining of the heat.

It was so for the next four years, until I met somebody who used and knew the roads better. He went on different routes, more than I certainly did on the same two bus services. He couldn't give a shit about how the roads made him feel. He didn't even care about listening to music on the move, which was absurd to me.

Still, hearing the expressway's acronym from his mouth felt as intimate as someone you liked whispering your name. Even if there's nothing romantic about my favourite songs competing with the wind for my ears, or the little heart attacks I get when a car suddenly swerves to our lane.

From the top of a double decker to pillion, it's a downgrade from the highest point I could get. I can barely hear the lyrics in my earphones, or sit in peace with the constant panic. I am vulnerable, but safe enough to tilt my head back and expose my neck. Home enough to choose the old expressway's newfound heights, even with someone who never thought twice.

rain

Once upon a time, I liked the rain. Dashing through with my older brother when I was nine, ignoring the tsks from parents awaiting their kids with umbrellas or raincoats; jumping in dirty puddles with my best friend at fourteen, until our shoes were heavily soaked. And just like any other sixteen-year-old trying to be emo, I walked in it with my earphones in and hood up, accusing the world of being against me.

It didn't take long for me to hate it, once enjoyment turned into annoyance. I started grumbling at the edge of Elias Mall, knowing the rain was still heavy enough to turn my uniform completely see-through. It seeped through to Year One, frowning when I was forced into narrower paths to navigate the polytechnic blocks. It stayed throughout my I'm-A-Flame phase, believing wholeheartedly that raindrops were poison.

I turned into my grandmother, who grumbled about the dark skies whenever she had a pail of wet laundry to hang. Wise words from her, not very deep but sticky enough to stay on the walls of my head: biar panas terik, daripada hujan lebat. I don't remember what prompted her to say so, but it was one of the things that made me favour hot weather.

Wait a few years, and then I met you. It was my first time knowing somebody with a bike. Right, my older brother rides too but we grew so far apart, I stopped knowing simple things like his occupation. I wasn't congratulating him when he passed, like my grandmother and aunt and cousin all were. I didn't care about him leaving the house with his helmet during a storm.

On the contrary, we avoided getting on your bike at the slightest dark cloud. Or when our phones chimed at the same time, our weather app announcing 'heavy, thundery showers expected in the east'. For some reason there was neither that fateful morning, when you looked up to the sky with a raised eyebrow, then fell for my prediction: It's not gonna rain lah!

You were smart enough to run the amber lights minutes later, just as the raindrops got heavier. Waterfalls were streaming down my visor by the time we entered the highway, but it was the least of my problems when I realised how barely visible the nearest vehicles already were.

I was shaking by the time I hopped off your bike at our destination, my wine-red shoes having turned into a dark, murky colour. You still had to deposit your bike out in the open carpark, and it took all my strength not to shiver as I watched you run back to seek shelter with me.

Our clothes and footwear were heavy with rainwater, and there was no shelter to my workplace. Neither of us had umbrellas. All we could do was wait and try to dry ourselves, you tipping your sandals over and me, removing my socks to squeeze them.

We were a mess, but I never stopped smiling. I reminded you of the day before, when I'd casually mentioned wanting to know what it felt like to ride on your bike in heavy rain. I got what I'd wished for, when years before I would have pushed all the blame on someone completely not at fault.

That morning didn't stop you from riding in the rain again, greeting me with a completely opaque shirt that was actually blue, dark pants that should have been maroon. It didn't stop me from getting on behind you, shaking my head no when you offered to wipe the soaked seat.

Slowly, feelings evolved once more. You wouldn't brush my hand at the red lights but down my right leg instead, and you wouldn't turn to say you love me, but to ask how I was doing in the drizzle. It would be colder, but I'd endure it the way you had to endure the hot weather you hate.

After you, my love-hate relationship turned into something else. They turned into acceptance. Deep down I still thought I was made of fire, that the rain would never be my friend again. But I chose the helplessness that flooded me as rain flooded my socks, and with you, I would never think twice about riding in a storm.

red

I've only ever seen you drive for a while. Smooth the whole time, so sweet with your left hand over mine. You only ever let go to dance to Black Pink's new song, and you only ever raise your voice when exiting the highway, screaming Drift, drift, drift!

But most of the time, you are reckless on the road as a rider. Drifting in between cars without a care in the world. Going above hundred, knowing that your bike can't quite take it. Holding an angry hand out towards drivers who don't let you pass. Picking up speed to run the amber light, sometimes even going through the red.

I have to admit, your bike might be the only place on earth where I don't trust you. You're not too shy to glare a driver down, even if it sacrifices your attention for the road. I've come to accept that tapping you on your back only makes it worse. That your road rage is almost always cultivated by that split-second fear of another driver's recklessness.

Just today you finally removed your probation plate. Just as you miscalculated and rode off the road and up the kerb, barely missing a traffic light pole. It got a shriek out of me, audible even through the music from my earphones. It took me a while to regain control of my own legs, and I had to ask twice if you were okay, even though my own attention was on the tire tracks through the mud.

It just became another secret to keep from our parents. After your fall on the expressway where you nearly slid under a bus, your mother demanded that you text when you're about to ride off, and when you reach your destination. My mother shows no exception, always asking me out of the blue, Did Faruq fetch you again? Are you always wearing your helmet properly?

It's okay even if you know what you are doing. Even if you are the slowest, safest rider in the country. Despite all that, my own paranoia brings me down. The thought of a wild dog appearing out of nowhere, making you swerve hard to dodge it. Or my loose cardigan getting caught in your tyre, tearing out my arm along with the sleeve.

It's not like we get to talk on the road. If we did, I would constantly ask for your reassurance, to tell me that my paranoia was impossible. You are the logical one, never letting fantasy or imagination get in the way. It doesn't help that your speed and ferocity are just as high, constantly at loggerheads with my own thoughts.

But the few times you do stop at a red light, I am back to knowing you are the safest place in my life. You lean an arm against my knee, a signal that it's safe to hold your hand. To put an arm around your neck and rest my chin on your shoulder, even. You don't have to say anything, just let your voice vibrate through to me when you turn your head slightly to mumble I love you.

I am helpless from behind, a passenger who needs assurance every kilometre. You make it seem so easy to erase my panic just by gripping my hand. Granted, I am unable to do the same for you, only getting in the way of your road rage when I tap your back to move you along. But I will always choose that pause, that hesitance before it picks up speed. I will always choose the brushing of your hand at the red lights, in spite of your recklessness before or after. 

groceries

I have never met a boy who does the grocery shopping for his mother, let alone have a supermarket that he prefers. When you moved out of Pasir Ris, you couldn't rely on the 24-hours Sheng Siong anymore. The one that sits in between your old home and mine, growing alongside us.

When we first started talking, we wondered if we had ever crossed paths unknowingly. Your secondary school was a few blocks away from mine, your old home exactly thirty from mine. If it hadn't been for the condominium, your living room and my bedroom would have been in perfect view of each other.

But I couldn't imagine being in that supermarket at the same time as you. Not when you were always running errands for your mother, while mine only came down on her own or with my niece. Maybe she's the one who has locked eyes with you before; it's a little funny to think about.

Our conversations started as small talk in early June: my mum asked me to get some stuff. They became Do you want to follow me to Sheng Siong or I'll just send you home first? Somewhere along the way I became your companion, helplessly carrying your basket while you run around the aisles, knowing where everything is.

You moved to Sengkang, but the supermarket at the top floor of the nearby mall wasn't good enough. Now that I think about it, how convenient that the girlfriend you send home everyday lives near the one you favour. You trade her backpack for bags of groceries in the box of your motorbike, one last cigarette while she snaps your receipt for a cashback app.

Your mother is so lucky to have you. Three sons, but one of whom knows which aisle the spices are, which potatoes are good, the name of every different leaf. The way you treat your family ignites this little flame in me, from the patience with your grandmother to the obligation to run every favour your mother asks. It's been getting harder to say no to my own mum, just thinking about the 'okay's you give yours.

I am out of place in the supermarket, in my jeans and hundred-dollar sneakers. I never know where everything is, or what half the things on your mother's lists are. But I will always love you for the way you paused one night, passing me your phone instead. Why don't you help me find all these things today? Go, while you pushed me on the small of my back.

I loved you even when you cleared your throat for my missing the coconut milk. Even when you made side-eye while I walked rounds around the aisles looking for sawi. Even when you snickered at me for directly translating laksa leaves to Malay when on the phone with my grandmother.

I am out of place again in your home, comfortable enough to lean all the way back on your bed, but still too nervous to eat with your parents. Too shy to even hand your mother the bags I had offered to carry, too shy to say I'd bought a bottle of her favourite winter melon tea. But it is somewhere along the way that I had chosen the groceries in your box, be they the ones you picked out or the ones I found. 

sidewalk

I told you about my obsession with parallels, first thing when we started talking. You didn't understand my image of a second me walking beneath, her feet mirroring mine. But we met, and you became another piece of my parallels.

You were the man turning twenty-five, the sides of his helmet squeezing his cheeks in. Nearly four in the morning when you deposited me at 606 for the first time, helping me unbuckle the straps around my chin. It was finally the beginning of something new, hugging you until I thought my heart would explode.

I told you about the night barely two months before, when somebody else dropped me off that very sidewalk. He had a bike with him too; an orange dockless one that continued being shared among strangers after he abandoned it at his own void deck. I was in the hoodie that he had just bought me, the very one I'd worn meeting you for the first time.

I went back further eight years before, when I was fifteen and somewhere else you had just started poly. When yet somebody else sent me home on his bike, my white Converse jumping off the pegs by his wheels. In his hoodie this time, a long black one with thin white stripes. It was only then that you understood my parallels; that eventually, you would find your own.

Having you in my routine now gives me extra ten minutes of sleep in the morning, sometimes twenty. You refused to let me go work by myself as long as you could still send me. So there you always were, scrunching up your face beneath your helmet as way of waving. You always come when I least expect it, making a U-turn at the vacancy of the lot before stopping right in the shade.

Sometimes you wore glasses, lens when you had to be somewhere else afterwards. Sometimes you would have packed lunch for me, with an egg that your mother rushed to fry while you were in the shower. And sometimes, once in a blue moon, you would be soaked from the rain, your maroon pants turning dark red.

I had hoped you would be the last person I'd see on this sidewalk. The last person I would wave goodbye to until out of sight. The last person I would wrap my arms around and kiss. It's been more than two months since you started dropping me off at 608 instead, but it was enough for me to choose the arms that lifted me off the old sidewalk, stones pressing against our chests.

marble

Two blocks from mine, to avoid the prying eyes of my older brother or father coming home from work. Your bike against the parallel yellow lines, with the spare helmet placed haphazardly on the edge of the seat.

There used to be another couple sitting on the ledge of 607, but we outlasted them. Maybe they broke up, or maybe they were platonic friends who found other people. Or maybe they just got bored of the mediocre view, the ordinary parking lot with hardly any wind.

In the beginning we sat on the kerb, where we had to keep shielding our eyes from the sudden headlights of cars turning in. Confusion and an identity crisis, when I told you not to fetch me from work like you usually would. But you showed up, a shadow on the ground before you pulled my shoulder and spun me around.

We talked it out, something I wasn't very familiar with. The argument closed when we leaned in to kiss, and the moment ended when a cockroach scurried past, along the kerb and somewhere among the grass.

Over time the marble table at 608 became ours. I have never seen anyone else sit there, not since we made it routine. Not even the one time I confidently declared out of the blue: I have a feeling that someone is sitting at our table right now.

But like magic after every trip to the minimart near my primary school, there it waits. There are always new cigarette butts around it, probably the only sign the table has of other occupants. Sometimes an empty pack or two is abandoned on it, prompting me to snort with disgust.

I will always sit facing the end wall, with you on my right. Your best friend joined us once; he had to sit opposite me. On another night, two of your secondary school friends visited, one of whom started smoking with you. I stood my ground despite the smoke wafting towards me, being seated between you two. This is my seat, I had whined like the 1995 kid I was to you guys.

The marble has seen enough of us, guests or no guests. From laughing at videos on Twitter to playing games we discovered from ads on Instagram. It's watched us down our lychee tea and milk coffee only a hundred times, while we rushed to decide the minute to leave.

Sometimes I liked to imagine the tiles of the chessboard holding pieces of our conversations. A black tile for the time we insisted on our own definitions of a 'half day'. A white for the time we talked about our fathers and their different ways of discipline. Another chipped tile for the night we sat there in silence, neither refusing to give in.

At the end of the night we always have to let go. It's never our home, this lonely table at this quiet void deck. When we're gone, or even before we frequented it, who knows the habits its occupants have. Who knows if there's some other couple or lonely old man out there who loves this sadness like I do.

Yet at the same time, I know each time I leave I never look back longer than I have to. A two-seconds glance just to make sure we haven't left anything behind, and that table will be off my mind until the next time you fetch me from work. Until the next time we are lost and have nowhere else to drink.

You have one last smoke, while I am already on my playlist, one bud hooked over an ear. You finish your cigarette, then the last bit of your tea before you dump our bottles into the recycling bin. I get up from your still bike, watch you strap on your helmet and get on it.

I balance along the edges of the kerb while you follow me on your bike, until we finally have to split paths. True that I will never once look back at it, but it is always then that I choose the marble table over which we talk, about the past eight hours and their little tests.

haikal

He found me first.

In the pictures I was barely twenty-two and somebody else's, but my name and smile were enough. A flick of his finger was the only thing he could do, so he waited, until it was my turn to find him.

There were just two photographs, one barely reaching the top of his chest. It looked like it was taken mindlessly at his desk, somewhere in the dimness of a bedroom. The second wasn't even of him, but a cat lying outside a flat and glaring into the camera.

A hello and a Hey kitty cat became late replies and constant apologies. They became unimportant questions just to keep the ball rolling. Laughs stretched out to fill the emptiness of the text box, and deals made to disguise mindless flirting.

We first met on a Wednesday evening, in the corner of a Starbucks called Rochester. I was an hour early, just fingering the strings on my parka while I waited, careful not to finish my caramel hot chocolate so quickly.

He wasn't what I expected, watching him saunter over to my table and take the seat next to mine. Not when he spoke, with the mild stutter he carried. His shyness was already established on his profile, while my tendency to shoot my mouth off was written on mine.

But I didn't take long to be myself, from laughing with my mouth open to grabbing his arm and running across the road. He even went along with my made-up superstitions; believing in the luck that came with spotting a C151B on the East-West Line and pointing out that we were on the same wavelength when we walked with the same foot first.

It took less than a week for his lines to fade. A text to this girl was his first deed every morning, whether or not she'd replied his messages from the night before. Sometimes it was a picture of the cat outside his flat, sometimes a song.

She told him she was made of fire, so he gave her songs about following your flame.

She told him about her dreams at night, so he got some wire and feathers from his best friend's parrot to make her a dreamcatcher.

She told him the one dessert she could eat everyday for the rest of her life, so he went to town for Hokkaido cheesecake that they would share in plain view of the train tracks.

She said she was fearless, so he laughed when she shrieked at a cockroach scurrying past her feet.

She told him about her cousin bringing her around in her car, so he drove her down the expressways home, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel while she screamed out the songs on his playlist.

She told him about her past, so he stayed up all night with her on the third anniversary of her loss.

It wasn't difficult imagining him sitting at his desk, twining wires into the shape of a dreamcatcher. Imagining him recognising the new train model and believing he would have good luck for the day. Or imagining him sitting in front of the restaurant at level one while I was sneaking out the back door.

He saw a future with me in less than two weeks, but unfortunately for him I didn't share that perspective. Despite being a daydreamer myself, I thought he was delusional. For the first time I knew how to reject someone whom I didn't feel the same way for. For the first time I was the one staying grounded while he was long gone in his own fantasy.

He found me first, but I didn't choose him.

5:32

Three years ago at this hour I was screaming for my life. I didn't know what was going to happen, yet I did, yet I didn't. I know it's been forever, so why do I keep bringing this up? To play the victim probably, you're right. It served me right to get myself pregnant in the first place, who asked me to sign all the papers at the hospital, it's been three years just get over it?

But what gets to me the most is his steps away. The pain I went through was nothing compared to watching him move on so easily. All along it was just another problem and not his own flesh and blood. That is still the source of my anger, at how my sacrifice was just a burden he got over. He has already replaced me I'm sure, and probably on the way to replacing you as well. Unless he doesn't want it the way he didn't want you. 

I wanted to be the mother whose photo you would always bring around after her death. The one whose world revolved around you, whose every action was controlled by wanting the best for you. I wanted to be a creased photograph in your wallet, pulled out in times of sadness and remembered for all the life lessons I taught you. 

But it turned out to be the opposite. I was the one left behind in this world with nothing but a blurry image. The one stumbling around wishing you were alive. I still feel an ache in my chest where my heart is supposed to be, at the mildest thought of you. Only recently I realised you were merely 13 centimetres, written so tiny at the corner.

No man would understand this loss. Women symphatise, but they don't know the regret and amount of love I was ready to give you without saving any for myself. I've been proven now that I don't have the means to love anyone, not a real human being, just trains and insects. 

It gets harder as my niece grows older. You would have been just a year younger than her, probably with the same fat cheeks and energy and intelligence. She's starting to be like me, with her stubbornness and pride, refusing to say sorry despite knowing she was wrong. She once exclaimed how she loved trains, would you believe it?

I still get scared hearing her cry, believing it's you, out to get her. I still get nervous when she comes into my room or holds my hand. At any moment now you could take over her out of anger or jealousy. Is it the guilt messing with my imagination, even three years later? I want to say I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but you'd be too young to even understand the word if you're alive.

I only ever mourn for you on the 10th of June. The date I lost you will always be more familiar than your actual birthday; you would have been a September girl like me, but when exactly? These little things will forever be a mystery, while I continue watching my family sing happy birthday to my niece every November 24th. 

If you think this is a letter in letting you go, you're wrong. You were a part of me and always will be, despite the fact that, if the afterlife exists, we will be on opposite ends of the spectrum. You were killed innocent, while I swear I will only let myself die a sinner. I'll continue believing every moth that lands on me is you, somehow, and nothing will stop me from crying whenever I miss you.

-letter to the daughter I never had

EW29

It's the start of another route: the one closer to my body, yet further from my heart. I don't have any tattoos for this one, but there are green lines all over my hands and arms anyway, as if I can never escape.

Two months after Toa Payoh first opened, this line was too shown to the world. I was born eight years later, given a home on one extreme end, but after I turned seventeen the line became clearer. It wasn't a boundary, made to separate me from my imagination. It was my own veins, threatening to drown and suffocate me.

Just like with the North-South Line, this route begins with the aspiring pilot. 

As usual, I remember what we were both wearing. It made him uneasy to have me travel all the way to the other end just for him, but I made it clear that it was no big deal. Maybe it was a lie, because I was still getting over the break-up of that time and memories were still abundant. 

But I did just fine. The last stretch towards this station almost made me fall for its entirety. With the flag in the distance and the bend that allowed the two ends of the train to look at each other; if the hurricane's arrival in 2013 made me love the red line, his departure nearly made me love the green. 

It was mid-May and I was still the same, spilling everything I had in a torn up notebook. Only this time in an unfamiliar place, a clean slate with neither bitter nor sweet. It was crowded enough to have me anxious, but it didn't deter the pilot from being himself. He was in his turf after all, with his home and second home being so close.

Standing on an overhead bridge almost parallel to the train tracks, he taught me a few things about life and the people in it. But for some reason his presence wasn't enough to pull me through. Like I said at Marina South Pier; he was just a mystery I didn't want to solve. 

Now here we are at Joo Koon, where train service ends but this story now starts. 

EW28

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

There was a time last year when I avoided the red line like a plague, especially the extreme north. Only Bishan was safe, its ghosts being so much easier to ignore with my layers of solitude.

It took me a while to realise that the green line was dangerous itself, with memories on every other station and their routes. Ghosts were everywhere, especially the man in the button shirt and woman in ripped jeans clinging on to each other.

After a long time, I gathered up my guts to travel from one end to the other, memories or no memories. The person I was meeting here said I didn't have to travel just for him, but I insisted on it. Maybe it was only to prove that I was fearless, but whether or not that was initially the case, the trip made that the truth: that nothing scared me.

My thoughts accumulated with every station that passed, from the moment we departed the first. I had no book to hide in, or song that wouldn't remind me of you. I might as well have been naked, with memories of you poking fun at me.

You and I never visited this station together, and perhaps that was why I exhaled in relief when I left the train. The platform felt so new yet safe. One end was wide enough to see incoming and departing trains, and at the time it was sunset, which awed me all the more.

I walked from one end of the platform to the other while waiting for my companion. We tapped out and he brought me around the neighbourhood, before bringing us back to Joo Koon. It was our first time meeting after three years of unfinished conversations and unfulfilled friendships.

One thing was for sure; hearing the name of this station felt like a new world and a new life. Pioneer, clean enough to dislodge from you, but a step closer to yet another one of our ghosts.

EW27

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

Some people are hard to forget and some are not. This one is the latter, because it didn't take much for me to realise how shitty this person was, how stupid our relationship was. Any sudden thought of either still makes me cringe, and I wish it never happened at all.

He is the one I called Ghost with a capital G, the very definition of 'fuck boy' that everyone was warned about but still fell for anyway. In others he was like you, laughing at my sarcasm and charming me with the little things like kissing the side of my head when we embraced. The only difference was it was just an act on his part. He wasn't loyal like you.

I have to remind you about this relationship from four years ago in order to draw the bigger picture. It took me a while to understand, but it was the harm from this person, and everyone affiliated with him, that made me wish you had stayed. I put all the blame on you, for leaving and making me mix with these people, for eventually coming back but not staying again.

August, I was the one who abandoned him when I chose to go back to you. I remember the show he put up for me here, his face so broken with an underlying anger. I finally walked away and met you on the platform where you were waiting. I had a bad cough and you asked me to drink water but I didn't want to, being in an MRT station. You pointed at my mom's water bottle that I was using and said, Abih angkat air tu buat apa?

But that didn't last, because a week later you decided not to be with me again. And that was when you became a bird that picks a caterpillar up to heights just to drop it, the wind that comes and goes whenever it pleases. That was when you became Hurricane 'Aamir.

I went back to that poser right afterwards, with his band bracelets and piercings and the fringe covering his eyes. For a period of time I, having been blinded, religiously got up early just to travel here where his house is. He skipped school so we could spend time using each other to let go of our own outside parties: you, and his lust.

September came. We've already talked about our crossing paths, again and again. Your best friend called out to me and I didn't see you until later, but even then it was only in the distance. We never made eye contact, I didn't look at you long enough to remember what colour you were even wearing. But you remember, because I was in the striped sweater I wore on our very first date.

What I would do to be back in Boon Lay, holding a pink water bottle in one hand and yours in the other. What I would do to be back walking to his house, only to change my mind and retrace my steps and wait for you instead.

EW26

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

Nothing new, but I remember the day I went to your school for the first time like it was just yesterday.

It's been five years but I still know what I was wearing, I can easily retrace the steps I took towards the running tracks, I can picture your friend's head poking out of the grandstand and calling out to me. I immediately ran, and her voice still rings clear to me, Eh, eh don't run! 

They were your first friends that I met collectively, but somehow they did a good enough job to make me feel welcome. I didn't feel completely out of place, even with my different exterior and cluelessness to the inside jokes.

But that didn't stay long, because you left eight months later, taking them with you. I don't blame them for taking your side, because they were your friends after all. But it didn't stop the insecurity from growing inside me, even when we finally got back together end 2014.

Each time you mentioned one of them I got riled up inside, imagining them saying mean things about me. It was clear your secondary school friends had big mouths, saying you can do better, asking why you'd lick back what you've spat out, whether the child is really yours. I could imagine what your ITE friends would have said as well.

It didn't help that you easily made friends wherever you go, formed bonds so tight that I can't get in and you immediately forget my existence. There will always be an army on your side, prepared to walk against me the moment you declare I am the enemy.

The girl who is a dancer. The friend that keeps pretending he is half British when he is clearly Malay. The only one in the group whose passion is actually hospitality. Any of their names were enough to make me insecure, imagining words they probably never even said, then blaming you and wishing I was the only one in your circle.

Two years ago before my Bali trip, you boarded the train here to two stations prior, where I waited on the stairs. You'd been sweating from your futsal game, and I had been crying because I told you not to go and you did. You enveloped me in hug after hug, but I wouldn't stop.

It's just a fucking game, you snapped eventually.

But it wasn't, and I wish you knew.

My insecurity started with Lakeside, where you fed it with the friendships you had at ITE. It never stopped growing and scattered all over the country, bits in the north and pieces in the stations to come.

EW25

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

It's true that I always end up fine in a few weeks each time you left me. But we all know it wouldn't be possible without the presence of other people, souls that were made to cross my path only in your dust. One of them were there during both break-ups; the aspiring pilot.

After three years, we met for the first time. I could tell he was comfortable, with nothing stopping him from talking to his heart's content. I was too anxious to buy my own meal, too shy to speak out my mind that was bursting at the seams. He was talking too much and was almost always interrupting me, but I genuinely liked his smile. That was probably the first reason I liked listening to him.

May 2017: it took many long conversations for him to admit he had a heart for me three years prior. When we met through a mutual and discovered that we both liked writing and had a page close to our hearts. He didn't do anything about those feelings of his because he strongly believed two writers can never click, with the universes in our brains that will constantly clash.

But for some reason, I didn't think so highly of him. There was nothing special about him aside from being a true "Flying-Type" person, with his desire to be a pilot and soar the skies.

I guess it went the other way around too, when he realised I wasn't that great either. He didn't get my jokes or sarcasm, while I thought nothing of his medals and shit. (he was nominated for some Lee Kuan Yew award in his polytechnic days, and was the second best of his cohort)

Even the only thing we had in common were in constant collision. He never read my blog posts, while I hated the long, fake-deep texts he always sent me. I'm not your phone memo, I once snapped.

You know, no matter how good you think you are, there's always someone better than you, he retaliated, as his way of confessing he thought nothing of my writing.

I don't care, I said, as I climbed into the backseat while my ego took the steering wheel. I'm better than everyone else right now.

Why is it you just piss me off? Don't brag. You're not the greatest.

But his every word fed my pride. You already know he was the one who taught me I was made to float. Truth was, he never actually said those words. He just became another person I thought ranked far below me, someone that will never be as great as I. His academic intelligence was nothing to me. The words he poured out on his phone memo could never compare to the words I write.

Maybe we had more than one thing in common: we both had pride. But just like where we lived, our humour and intelligence sat on opposing ends. I was stuck in the extreme east while he continued making Chinese Garden home, with the casuarina trees and countless frames displaying all his achievements.

EW24/NS1

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

We both know the way things ended and began again here.

We both know the tears staining your uniform and the arm shoving me off and the grudges that came after. We both know the first hug after six months and the shy hands grasping for each other and the hope that broke barely a day later.

But we forgot everything else. Waiting outside the fitting room for you to try on shirts; hurrying me when I took my time looking at books; sitting next to each other on the high stools of McDonald's. You ignored them, which made it easy for you to leave; I ignored them, which made it hard for me to forgive.

I was anxious the day I met you again, to the point of having my stomach churn. I'm not sure if you remember, but I didn't have much appetite and I told you there was something twisting in my tummy. You asked if it was my period, so naturally, as if we were still together. It just made me more nervous.

You bought a box of kuey teow and we sat beneath the tracks, right in the middle of the stairs where everyone else was walking. I wish the restart was that easy, but a flower so tiny managed to come in between, convincing you that you weren't ready to be with me again.

Almost every one of your birthdays was spent here. 2013, when I sneaked up on you walking with your friends and yelled Surprise! even though it was clear you already expected me. 2015, when you comforted me beneath the tracks, held me close while I cried to the point of having to remove my contacts because they got so dirty. 2016, when I finally smiled after sulking for an hour and you said When I get back, we'll kiss okay?

It's another one of those places where ghosts are abundant, both bitter and sweet. They're wretched phantoms when I'm alone, but coming here with you, they're just memories to recall.

Remember when we ate Wendy's here? Their beef chili was so good.

Remember when you sent me off to 160 and waved at me through the window?

Remember when you waited here with your long skirt? You looked so beautiful.

Jurong East, home to memories so easily forgotten when the anger clouds over. It's so easy to travel back to the day we met again, to pretend I am sitting, waiting for you. The fabric of your polo tee beneath my arms and your cologne wafting into my nose. We should have just stayed there. Maybe our life together would have been different.

EW23

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

I know you got sick of me mentioning your nine times leaving, again and again. "You've left me nine times you can do it again" sounds so distant now, truth finally attaching itself to a little dare.

But I also know for a fact that you've lost these 'nine times' somewhere along the way, not remembering where some of them even are. The one where you left me crying at Jurong East is familiar, we both know that story. The one where Tinder was your first comfort stands out too, your girls becoming ghosts that haunted me.

This is the story of your first departure, put aside immediately after it happened. So easily forgotten, but now reopened along with its dust and spiders.

You were two months away from 17, in your white ITE shirt with the sleeves rolled up. There was a time when we met as much as we could, your willingness to come to the west just to see me. For the life of me, I don't remember what we were arguing about there and then; it happened so quickly.

I was holding my laptop bag, the one that doubled as a backpack and had flowers all over. Somehow it slipped from my grasp, and it landed on the floor with a very dull thud.

Unsurprisingly I blamed you, raising my voice a little, You see what you made me do! You picked it up for me, but you snapped back How is that my fault?! You already knew me for my anger, having witnessed it firsthand a few times now.

Then came the most ridiculous argument ever, to be topped with a fight about movie tickets three years later. It had to do with you trying to use the machine to top up your Ez-link, and then suddenly stomping away and leaving me clueless. I asked what's wrong, but you didn't answer, I yelled again What's wrong with you?!

And you finally snapped back, The machine can't accept my coins! What a stupid thing to yell, to have people turn and look at you for, but it was enough to rile me up. I walked away and soon disappeared in the crowds; it didn't matter because you didn't chase me.

For the entire weekend I was your stranger, someone on your timeline going off about the guy who broke her. And I know we were officially broken up, not just a fight somehow, with the way you weren't bothered to work things out anymore.

My layers of ego didn't take long to strip away, wishing you were mine once again. Admitting the fault was mine or even apologising was heavy on my tongue, but I made it clear that I wanted to be part of your life again. You accepted a few days later, after a blog post spilling whatever I wanted to.

It wouldn't be the first time you came bouncing back when you left. It wouldn't be the first time I used my magic with words to convince you to return. But our ghosts still ring clear at Clementi, my walking away and your deciding not to stay; the first of our many departures.

EW22

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

Just like the stained black cardigan I wore for a whole year, your white uniform from School Of Hospitality is symbolic of 2013 and west side stations. There is a memory of you walking towards me on Jurong East platform, the first time personally seeing you in it.

Memories are easy to see and sometimes smell, but I can also still feel the fabric of this shirt in my hands. This ITE shirt would turn into your booking in/out uniform, into a white Uniqlo button-down you wore to your office at Police Cantonment Complex, and eventually into the very light blue shirt you wear beneath your SilkAir vest today.

You were insecure in it back then, but I didn't know how to convince you that I was smitten. The ITE logo was so faint on your pocket, but you couldn't stop wondering what the polytechnic kids were thinking of as they looked at you.

They weren't my own schoolmates, but the station was already swarming with students. They flooded the bus that we took to my new school as well, and we held on to each other for dear life from the judgemental eyes. These people were about to be my comrades in a week's time, walking the same steps and bearing the same Ngee Ann Polytechnic logo on our student cards.

It didn't take long for the both of us to realise I'll never belong. We were never in the same high school, but our split in tertiary was proof that we were always on opposite ends. You with your ability to make and keep friends, me with my natural talent of standing out for the wrong reasons.

I already stood out on the very first day of lessons, when we were asked to announce our academic goals to the rest of class. I said I wanted to prove my parents wrong. The room went dead silent, and the lecturer asked again, Sorry? What do you want to achieve, exactly?

And I wish I'd said I just wanted a diploma, like everyone else did.

Year One went by and I remained the outcast that I was in my last year of high school. I thought a new school would help shed that skin off me, but I either tried too hard or not at all.

In the end, I chose my love for writing over education. I have no regrets, but perhaps it was another division between us; you went on to graduate from ITE with your beloved classmates while I had neither in my name.

Dover was where I got swept with the generic crowd. Funny that you were in a school that still bore uniforms, but you were blessed with classmates so different from one another. I continued taking the bus with the zombies, mindless despite the clothes on them that screamed personalities.

EW21/CC22

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

Change at this station for the Circle Line...

I won't be able to complete my sentence because you'd immediately clamp a hand over my mouth. You've heard the announcement so many times on your own, you didn't need me to echo and intensify it.

You got so annoyed by it that you always pretended to slit my throat, my biggest psychological weakness. But it didn't stop me from anticipating that familiar ring, that familiar voice with the pauses and tone that I have memorised.

In anticipation for the Thomson Line, I wondered what the interchange announcements would be like. I repeated Change at this station for the Thomson Line, in many different tones, asking what you thought the finalised one would be. Your response was simple: who cares?

But I did. And deep inside, I didn't care that you didn't. You could clamp a hand over me all you wanted, but nothing would stop my mind from exploding at its seams. I loved to annoy you with my imitations, testing how far I could say it before you reached my mouth. Maybe it truly got on your nerves, but sometimes it just felt like a game to me.

The love for trains was not the only thing that made us different. Majority of our time passing by here, you were technically a white-collared worker. You looked so smart in your ironed shirt and gelled fringe, while I always showed up in my ripped jeans and uncombed hair.

You had nothing interesting to say most of the time, so you resorted to listening to me go on about the books I was reading. Your hands would be on my waist and mine around your neck; a very neat man with this unkempt girl. Sometimes you let me go suddenly, when you realised one of your colleagues was on the same train. Always somehow ashamed of me.

All my love for the things you didn't care about, from the stories I read to the announcements I mimicked. You were love drunk most of the year, fixated on me no matter what I talked about. No matter how little to none interest you had.

Back in 2013, when we walked along the streets by Masjid Sultan, I saw a bus with this station's pixelated name. Buona Vista, I mimicked, and immediately declared that I could be the MRT announcer woman.

You laughed at me, and it contributed to the line being drawn between us. But once upon a time, it was these differences that made you love me more than anything. You thought it was a phase that would disappear, but turned out it was your love that did.

EW20

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

It was never a big deal working at Ben and Jerry's for me, but for some reason whenever I told someone I worked part-time there, they'll go into disbelief. Excitement almost. What's the big deal? It's just ice-cream. You could just as easily get it from supermarkets.

I'd applied with the one I called Ghost, but every time the schedule came out I dreaded to see his name beneath mine. We had to sit through orientation together, when you were almost part of my life again. Fading, giving blue ticks to my slew of messages. Another one of your departures, caused by a blog post I wrote about him.

Truth be told I hated working there. With comrades that knew what they were doing and had little patience for a newbie, to managers that pit blame on me just because the manager's son mentioned not wanting to work with me. I didn't want to stay there much longer, despite all the benefits.

Late December 2014, you followed me down in your checkered shirt, when they made us play Secret Santa and I had to drop off my present. We took the train around, hands no longer shy to hold. I didn't even bother saying hi to anyone, just strolled in, dropped the gift and walked back out. Nobody noticed me, or if they did, I didn't work there long enough for recognition.

I didn't have to say that I wanted to quit. I faded away, and at some point the manager removed me from the Facebook group.

I hated Commonwealth and route 105 because of an ice-cream store, but I managed to escape, the last time visiting here being yet another restart of our relationship. We don't have any memory here at this station, apart from the self-loathe and loneliness that came from wishing you never left.

EW19

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

When you left in early 2014, I struggled. I let out my anger, I cried enough, I wrote my mind out. And then the unexpected happened: I actually moved on.

Like I said, it wasn't possible without the presence of others, people who came to be this weird thing called friends. I met so many in your dust, but the most impactful bunch was this group called Heroine.

We all knew a mutual who added our numbers into a random group, and that was the simplest way we befriended each other. It was the early conversations that pulled me through, silly enough to help me forget you, filling enough to make me stay.

But like with my newfound polytechnic friends the year before, I made one mistake. That was getting too close and showing too much of myself to them, hanging on to their existence and the possibility of a forever friendship.

I hate myself to the core when I think about it today, and I wish so badly it never happened. I didn't learn from the mistake in April, actually repeating it with different parties. A different couple. I nearly destroyed a five-year relationship, yet there I was, playing with the fragility of a new one.

It was the girl from the previous couple that finally, as a close friend, pointed out how fucked up the people in this society usually are. She wasn't really a part of it, but she knew better seeing it from the outside.

I wish I'd met her under different circumstances, instead of being the girl that her boyfriend cheated on her with. But the aura exuded from her was still more mature than the two Heroine boys we just split from, and it grew more apparent that I would never belong too, not with them, not with her.

So on the train back to the east, she talked conviction into me, only stopping when she alighted at Queenstown. 2014 was finally coming to an end, along with the high that came from these unusual friendships. I haven't heard from her or any of them in more than three years, and it's just as well.

EW18

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

We never had reason to visit the few stations here, individually or together. Neither of us worked or had school here, there were no buses that would bring you to Johor, no libraries that would shelter me while waiting for you.

But there was one instance: when you had to take your blood test before National Service. Do you remember? Maybe you wouldn't, but I can imagine the frown on your face before you suddenly exclaim Oh! You'll try to deny my memory, saying it happened somewhere else, but we both know I remember better.

It's so insignificant to you, despite your weakness with seeing heavy amounts of blood. I am the one who remembers, from what we were wearing and the buildings I saw while looking for the one you were in. I swear it was only yesterday, even though it's been three and a half years.

I finally found it, but of course I had to wait outside. I watched other guys walk in and out, some of them possibly the same batch as you months later. You soon left, with a plaster on your inner elbow and a face so pale.

The bus stop we sat at while you told me everything still rings clear in my head. If I was an artist I could draw out the scene, complete with me in the pink butterfly tee and you in your navy blue.

For some reason we headed to Ang Mo Kio Hub, where we ate Swensen's. We were so happy, it was another one of our restarts; we took a picture, which you used as your new Twitter icon. Hi because hello, your first tweet that showed our face to the world again.

You were still constantly prodding at me about your loyalty throughout the year, while I had rivers and white roses and ghosts. But while your blood was being collected in a bottle more than three years ago, it was my turn to be faithful. You were going into National Service the following year, where your only competition came to be my depression.

Who knew Redhill would be one of the last bits of innocence we had, when months later it would be my turn to bleed. I wish I was only now alighting at Bukit Merah bus interchange, wondering which way to go. I wish we had stayed at that bus stop, hearing you talk about nearly fainting at the sight of your own blood.

But the train had to leave, and its descent into the tunnel was the only way it could progress.