EW2/DT32

We're finally at the second last, before we enter the black hole that you always thought my hometown was in. I still remember the day you fetched and told me that the stretch after this station just made my home seem like a different world.

As usual, I can name you every movie we've ever watched here, which of the three malls exactly. The photographs still hang on the walls of my head, even if they were long deleted. From the benches we sat with our hotdogs from Gogo to the corners where we hid to kiss.

Here was another one of the places we reconciled. Since when was there a Boost here? I exclaimed, with your hand in mine on a Saturday morning. You'd just ended your night shift at Cantonment and I was supposed to fetch you but it was one of the rare occurrences I was late.

I didn't know either! Rara showed me. Her cousin was working here. 

A smoothie bar. A stranger making our King William Chocolate and Lite Mango Magic, that's all, and yet she is now contributing to the story of why we broke up.

This was somewhere in late July, after I had to let both the rose and my anger at you go. You once accused me of my disloyalty in Year Two, when you said At least I stayed loyal to you the whole year, while you fooled around with so many guys. 

But last year it was you, with your girls on Tinder that became my snakes instead. You claimed they were just rebounds, forcing yourself to move on from the 'love of your life' that you yourself dumped like she was nothing.

It was too easy getting blinded by you again, with our smoothies and your trash talk about the girls you fooled around with. There was a song whose lyrics we fought over at the bus stop, when you said it was So say goodbye and disappear, while I was absolutely sure it was actually So say goodbye and hit the road. 

Of course I was right, like I always was, like you always refused to admit. I was also right when I said you would leave again, but you veiled over my eyes with your sweet talk. The same tongue that I fell for, again and again despite the way it sends me crashing every single time.

We took 168 back to the north, and on the way I showed you my diary entry from the day you called me thirteen times. Oh how the tables have turned, I snickered, while your heart broke at the other entries from when I was hopelessly in love with your best friend.

It was when the bus entered the expressway did I let go of your hand to entangle my earphones. I didn't offer to share, the way we used to on our first few dates. I relented, but only if it was the playlist called 29/9, just to show that I still wasn't yours. I looked out the window instead of sharing my thoughts, something you were strange to.

We passed IKEA, sandwiched between the past, where we wandered with thoughts about a house we could never afford. The near future, where we would buy pillows and towels before you moved in your new place. Our ghosts weren't ghosts like they will be, but memories we recalled together.

It is here that sits a community hub, where you sat beside me while I edited my poems. Where I sat beside you while you watched football on the huge screen. Where we sat with our legs up and microphones to our mouths, screaming Taylor Swift at the top of our lungs as promised.

Woodlands was always dear to me as it was to you, your home more so than home. This station and its entirety is the east equivalent, from the amount of time I spent at my cousin's and secondary school best friend's place, and the mall that is now closed for renovations. A second home that will never be, with its ever moving crowds and vastness.

But it is also here that you find someone new each time, with the girls in photographs, graduating from this same polytechnic. It is here you meet them, over coffee or cereal or conversations so mundane that you wondered why you settled with my eccentricity for years.

It is here that you let me go, on with your life like I never existed. Maybe someday it will be my turn, back to the days in my youth when I hadn't met you. Back when my time revolved around cousins and girlfriends and the lack of money in my pocket.

Tampines, where the crowds don't stop moving, slew of passengers alighting the train until I am the last one in the cabin.

Now the train departs yet again, only I finally have enough space to turn in my seat and look out the window. The bit of dread in my heart doesn't change the fact that I am nearly home.