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.