Can't.

'Love' doesn't change anything. It gives a different perspective in the day, but come night and it is the ugliest thing. My love for trains and insects and a human to call mine? Without sunlight they're just strips of my raw skin hanging from my face.

A book that I wrote isn't supposed to exist. Songs I'd listened to shouldn't be familiar to me today. Truth is, I should have been dead three years ago, in the month of April. Or even from way before, June of 2015. I shouldn't be having these panic attacks on my single bed because I should've died on one, four and a half years ago.

What do you blame when everything is fine and you're still feeling like this? I can't breathe I can't breathe I can't breathe

Sel

I tend to turn conversations around. Too many musings and theories in my head that threaten to explode. Sometimes I can't help but want to expose them all, with whichever lucky person talking to me.

With a passing colleague, with a chatty customer, with one of my many aunts, I think twice before saying anything. I replay a question over and over, making sure it's understandable. I rethink the details of the story I want to tell, whether something is considered oversharing.

But with the right people, once I start talking I can't stop. Background information. Context. Unnecessary detail. The right people have been with me long enough to know the gun that is my mouth. They may have blank faces until I say something that doesn't quite make sense.

I don't know if my words hurt anyone. Maybe if I save all the bullets for myself they won't. The tendency to talk worlds about myself is justified by the aspiring writer in me. But snap myself out of it and it's just called self-centered.

Do I turn these conversations to be about me? Or do I nod in rhythm until they are so far into their story that there is nothing to add from either of us?

When she is telling me her reading interests, do I ask about the books she has read or do I tell her Ah, my taste is the opposite, blah blah blah me?

Weeks ago, I did neither. I smiled and nodded, and we fell into silence. I looked down to start plucking my nails. By the time I thought of what to say, she had started talking to someone closer, and I drifted off.

For a while I thought I'm doing better than I ever was, throwing Morning!s to every colleague I pass and talking to Pezzo cashiers until they give me a discount. But here I am on my second full-time job still bad with people. Lost as ever between my enthusiasm and selflessness.

I saw her stumbling around the back on her own today. Not too worried to run to her then, but concerned enough to blurt out Are you okay? when she entered my peripheral.

Cramps, which I didn't have the antidote to. Cold sweat, which for me could only be cured with a blanket. Again, I fell into silence with her. My hands are so cold, she continued, and she reached out to hold my hand in hers.

I noticed for the first time how small her hands were.
But apart from that, I didn't know what to do and I'd been silent enough with her.
I just gaped at her wedding ring, which I hadn't noticed before.

She helped me out by saying she was going home, taking half the day off. All I could say was okay, even when I had branches of words to tell her.

I made a mistake

This always happens. I want something so much that it unhinges me. I hold on to it so tightly it breaks, from its solidity to fragments. From my sturdiness to doubt. So, so much doubt.

Did I fuck up for leaving my work hanging from last year? The already-little confidence that dwindled when a local publishing company finally replied my e-mail, only to reject me.

Maybe the mistake started from the moment I decided to center my first novel around Wind, Rose, Flame. A story that has now long expired, a useless friendship tattooed on my back years ago.

Maybe it was the coloured-paper storybooks I made in primary school, or the diary entries from secondary school. Maybe it was the blog posts I furiously typed out in year one in place of overdue assignments. Or the poems I scribbled in my notebook on the morning bus rides to work.

I have fallen in love so deeply that I am now unsure. The happiness scares me sometimes, I think it's me at my most vulnerable. Anything can happen. Anything can break. Flames die out, except the ones sparked from anger. Nothing has changed, yet everything is different. I am high, but I am in the best place to fall to my death.

Once upon a time I thought a better man and a better job would bring me out this pit.  A better man brings tiny nephews and a better job brings colleagues exactly twenty weeks pregnant. A better me brings silent cries and carefully hidden pain. Who do I blame when everything is okay?

Now it's dawning on me that the higher I am, the deeper my trough.

fifteen thousand

When I was still with my ex-boyfriend, my mum already had her sights on my future with him.
Our wedding, to be exact.
Fifteen thousand, to be exact.
I thought it was ridiculous; I also thought she was joking.

I got to know that she was serious, from how she would not stop mentioning it. I reassured my ex and myself she was asking for such a high amount because of the trouble we had conjured. By that time, he had already gotten a job as a steward and I thought she was just trying to take advantage of the money he'd be getting.

Almost two years later, she is still hung up on a fifteen thousand dowry only now she is expecting it of someone else. Over time, as ridiculous it really is, I realise it isn't funny anymore. Something simple is being made difficult by my own mother.

As a result of how small this country is, I got to know that my boyfriend's brother is married to a friend from secondary school's sister. We spent a better half of secondary school as best friends, but as adults we drifted further and further until we just stopped caring.

But her sister remembered me from the one time I'd come over, almost ten years before. And just like that, I had an old friend back. The last time we met was the last day of August: the birth of her and my boyfriend's second nephew. Both their families were there, including her new sister-in-law.

Somehow I was still in the mindset that anyone who is married should be older than me, right? Her obviously pregnant belly assured me of it. When I first greeted her I'd taken her hand and put it to my nose; she didn't question it, maybe thinking I was younger than her.

Later when I started talking to my friend, I got to know her sister-in-law was 24, just like us. Somehow it slipped my mind that we were way past a marriageable age. That was when I noticed more engagements and weddings among my Instagram following. Some of whom are younger than me.

I can't help but to feel envious. Sometimes sitting on the couch with my love and his parents, one of them would suddenly bring up an upcoming wedding. Some way or another the conversation would wind its way back to our own plans for marriage.

I've listened to their reasons why they just can't give in to my mother's desired amount, even if they can afford it. And wouldn't I be a laughing stock? Not even a diploma, zero sense of religion, not very household-oriented.

Even if the dowry is out of the picture: knowing how my mother is, no daughter of hers will have an ordinary wedding. Not even an ordinary engagement. No, there must be an elaborate ceremony, with her colleagues and friends, more than her daughter's. There must be a five-star hotel, with a famous eighteen-year-old violinist from Malaysia that she is obsessed with.

That is the complete opposite of what I dare to envision.

weakness

This person was always someone to look out for, so they say. If there is even a sign that you'll get a good one, lucky you. On the contrary, if they take one glance at you and decide you aren't worth shit, then you aren't worth shit. They're a mother-in-law, already eyeing your every move, already blaming you for every wrong her own child does.

In the past, this figure I had didn't think so highly of me. I dare say she was probably the only other person who thought lower of myself than I do. All for the lack of a headscarf, not even saved by my long sleeves and jeans everyday. She even overlooked her hurricane of a child, not the slightest suspicious that he served alcohol on his flights and did the forbidden in the room he rented in Singapore.

I grew up sheltered, with a mum that allowed me to wear sneakers with my baju kurungs and supported me in every awkward phase I went through. I had an aunt who took me in when my parents didn't know what to do anymore, and my dad's many sisters and sisters-in-law loved me throughout my childhood and youth. You couldn't blame me for being wary, despite the many motherly figures I've had my whole life.

He told me his father was easy to go through because they were closer. That his mother was the one who so blatantly asked when he introduced his ex to her, "Betul, ni yang kau nak?" It didn't matter how much he really liked her; his mother accepted that, but it didn't stop her remarks and constant asking if he was serious. Not a good thing to hear when it was just about the same things my own ex-boyfriend's mother said.

She was the first of his parents I'd met, at a bus interchange I so loved and detested. I shyly asked how was she, before watching her kiss his cheeks and vice versa. Barely a month since we got together, I thought it was the purest thing I'd ever seen. Gone from my mind was the times my own mother kissed my forehead when she or I left for work.

I saw how fair she was standing next to her son. Got how the people in his stories were surprised to know he was her youngest child. My heart melted, and that day I replayed the tiny interaction over and over, unsure if my smile and shy "How are you?" were good enough. I was still falling for him, but I couldn't comprehend feeling the same way towards his mother. I didn't understand why my heart skipped a beat when he said she thought I was pretty.

I only got a taste of how talkative she was at our first dinner together. A contrast to the silence his dad sat in, she laughed and brought out memory after memory. I still didn't know what to say, or even where to put my hands. I just sat there with a dumb smile, wondering why his parents weren't interviewing me like they had joked they would. It seemed like there was always a gap in his family that was made for me and I'd simply just filled it.

Eleven months later, she too can't escape the random comments and musings that spill out my mouth. Sometimes she was the one who asked about my job or my plans or simply where her son and I went on our dates. Other times when it was just me being my own version of talkative, she simply nodded. She would make a face when it was clearly something she didn't care about, but that's the thing. I didn't take it to heart. She just reminded me of my love, with his straight face while I rambled on and on.

You're lucky enough to find a good person after a bad relationship. Imagine finding a motherly figure who only speaks well of you, even with your uncombed hair and ripped jeans, even after seeing you drool in her son's bed. I'd gone over with holes in my knees twice, but instead of reprimanding me or making snide remarks behind my back, her invitations kept coming, until my ripped jeans remained untouched at the back of my wardrobe.

She remembers my off days and my schedules, constant asking him if I would be coming over. She saved my favourite chicken part for me, and she refrained from cooking beef when I casually mentioned cutting it off completely to save the earth.

"Kenapa tak makan daging lagi?"

"Beef ada big environmental impact on the earth."

"Abih chicken tak impact the earth?"

She'd asked with a hint of sarcasm, but her giggles washed off the discomfort I would have felt if my own mother had said it. I thought of my own mum, telling me off for being 'picky' when I never really liked beef in the first place.

She was the reason why I went home one day and just decided to eat without cutlery for the first time. How I told her so sadly that my own family members laughed at me for my mistakes, thus why I only ate with my hand in secret afterwards.

Five new cardigans, a mix of my usual black and two shades darker, after a trip to Kuala Lumpur. "I didn't think twice, I just took the kind of jackets you always wear," she had laughed in Malay, tossing me bag after bag of cardigans.

Me, cutting hotdogs in her kitchen while she worked on the rest of the magic. How she had time to stop and correct me, while giggling at the mistakes I was making out of something so simple.

Now I am in tears, thinking of how much she loves me and I, her.

I've always wanted to ask her where she and her husband had gone dating in their days. What age she started donning the headscarf, whether it was her own will or out of love for anyone. I wanted to ask what comes into her mind when she looks at her youngest son, a split image of the love of her life.

I wanted to talk to her about my mother, about how she never took me seriously. About my father who beat me senseless and always let his anger speak first. I wanted to tell her about how my parents only used religion in their favour, the reason why I could never head down that path.

I want to tell her that she has changed me, with the way she brushed my boyfriend's hair and touched his face. The way she leaned against her husband and called him Abang... so adoringly. The way she laughed in the backseat when I talked mindlessly in shotgun.

With her teasing and giggling and remembering the little things about me, I chose the only other woman who is your weakness.

man

I saw you first, from posts on his Instagram. He has your eyebrows, though yours are more faded and sprinkled with age. You saw me later through photographs he kept in his phone. I looked younger than I was, making you tease him for courting a kid.

Two days before his graduation we finally met, though there was not much more from your subtle nod and my shy smile. You reminded me of my own dad, from how you spoke quietly to the way you brought your head back to look at your phone screen.

You were always the subject of our conversations at the marble table. He respected you, he was weary of you, he kept secrets from you. Your discipline was just as tough, but he never hated his father the way my older brother and I did ours.

Years ago I thought if our father was shorter than us, it was our turn to stand before and protect them. I long had the honour of being taller than mine, but it is nothing compared to how he towered above you. I had to watch the way he cared about you in a way my heart couldn't comprehend.

Maybe it is the way your face lights up whenever I visit, and my father's frown whenever he sees me. Maybe it is your longing to teach me about religion, compared to my father's usage of god's name in anger and pride. Maybe it is the way you take our relationship seriously instead of shrugging my feelings off like a phase.

It was him showing you pictures of me that tugged at my heart. It was looking at the old photographs where you looked exactly like the love of my life today. It was being told how much you'd wanted a daughter, that made me cry before him for the first time.

At first I envied him for that ability to love a man for his harshness. Through your impatience with your three sons and love for your two daughters-in-law, your gentleness with your nephew's autistic child; eventually I understood.

It was your family that welcomed me, from your mother who only stops grumbling about everything when I visit; your niece who insists I don't have to kiss her hand despite the age difference; your nephew who got me to try durian for the first time in my life.

Sadly that meant the fatherly love I felt came from somebody else's instead of mine. Against all odds, I chose the man who was the spitting image of my love. For now I can only smile at him in greeting, until the day I am allowed to hold and kiss his hand in respect.

// foreshadowing

28 02 19 // 16:27

This wouldn't be the first time I tried this writing thing again. Only two years ago I was painfully loyal, checking boxes after each successful day having written a diary entry. Getting bruises and ink all over my fingers, rough and callused skin at the edge of my middle fingernail. 

I write numbers everyday. Invoice numbers, purchase orders, customers' contact numbers. I'm not a numbers person; I can barely multiply single digits without losing my head. But words are always mine, and until now I believe I do not have blood but ink in my veins. 

Two years ago I was in an entirely different state. I mean, I'm stuck in the same country with no means or intention to ever leave; but my mental state was different back then. I was unsure. I was a child despite being on the way to 22. 

Maybe now I am still scared, but of better things. Back then I was afraid of disturbance in my own space. Of buses crashing into me when I was just standing at the sidewalk. Of lunatics attacking me while I'm minding my own business. Tiny ripples that I'd remember forever, even after they've long dispersed.

Now I am afraid of bigger things. Of crashing into stone instead of a soft bed designed to inhale my shape. Now I am afraid of cars swerving suddenly to the lane I'm on. But the fear could only come from the fact that I was out there in the first place. On a parachute, on pillion behind a new man.

I found a better man last year, albeit one who abused my affinity in the worst way a love could. He smokes, but it is the smell of cigarettes sticking to his skin and lips that I grew to love. Sometimes I think about the past, about a boy whose affection I grew to hate. I was the reason that he started smoking, during his days at Outram Park. He is why I wish I am the reason for somebody else to stop.

Next month would make it the ninth since we got together, since I found him. He found a best friend in me, as empty as I am, a void to fill his pent up emotions into. He had been lonely for the previous four years, left behind without explanations and missing thrice as many almosts. While there I was, chasing the same two impossibilities.

Somehow we found each other, even when we are completely different. Maybe the other sides of the spectrum, with his logic and my imagination. Different from whom we loved, five years ago for him and five years long for me. Even with our differing tastes in music and faith, we found comfort in the same marble table, the same lullaby that is his thirteenth floor flat, the same longing during hard days at work. Most of all, the same person: each other.

I got unbelievably lucky there. Maybe next I would find a better job, with better things to love. I would love colleagues who did their part instead of relying on me for every enquiry. I would love friends who spoke in English first and would never leave me out. I would love as an equal and not a superior.

In a way my relationships would correlate with my careers. Here I am now, with a man I treat as an equal. In no way have I belittled him or felt neglected, even after more than eight months. I've never been happier and healthier. For now I am not only content but genuinely happy.

At least, until I clock in tomorrow and remind myself of my newfound indifference for my job.

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.