The Lake

We had a gathering at a church friend's apartment. I left late.

Missed the last train at the interchange, and tried to catch the last random bus that would bring me closest to home.

Bus 78 didn't follow the route that I was expecting. So I dropped along Penjuru. I think that's the name of the road.
Before me was quite a serene sight to behold. It was ordinary yet out of the ordinary.

The lake was placid, and there wasn't a single soul.
I could hear my thoughts, sequencing themselves - gently and melodically - with the patter of raindrops against the gravels.
I thought about my trip to Europe, the familiar and the foreign, the imaginary and the imagined, the hit and the misses, the quietness in the Metro station, haribo, the summer sundaes, and the train ride into the forest. And the lake!

I'm drifting away into an emotional ensemble of nostalgia and brokenness,
each trying to relief the other,
together a crescendo, and then - inevitably - a morendo.

Paper, poems and photos.
That's a good idea, for my final rendition.

Leaving

Over at the arts canteen yesterday.

"Don't you want to get out of Singapore?"

"Not yet..."

"Why?"

"I... got things to do here," I remarked.

It was quite a reflexive answer. I guess I meant what I said.
I can imagine myself living vicariously forever.

Togetherness

There was a photo of us, that I enjoyed looking from time to time.
I clipped it to my notebook, and was carrying it around for a while.
Frankly speaking, I've never quite recovered from that day we took that photo.
It immortalized a togetherness that I knew on foresight (or should I say hindsight?) would not last.

I remembered that day when I sat on a bench.
It was late morning, and the park was quite empty,
not just of people, but of sound and colors.
The hope that I had been searching for was turning into a myth.
I unclipped the photo, left it on the bench, and walked away.

"Self-preservation," I thought to myself - a rather naive sort of psychological self-therapy.

Indeed, the thoughtless declaration of self-preservation has been nothing more than an artifice, as I searched within myself.

You see, it's not exactly the memories that are wearing down my defenses against your personality.
What I've found in my dream-like abyss is a joy shared between us that doesn't exist.
Perhaps if time is less unforgiving, this joy might be given a chance.

I suppose it doesn't have to be that way. Joy will find us somehow, though not shared between us. And then,
I'll return to the different places that we've been, to breathe in the nostalgia of a togetherness long forgotten, and wander in the tender fragility of a story that can only be for our exclusive perusal.