NS9

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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