museum ramblings

plucking a leaf out of a forest of history, handling it with tremulous fingers and tender touch. tomorrow the other trees will be chopped down without regard in the race and embrace of modernity. great halls and harsh lights, shoes clicking on smooth floors. quiet reflection and contentment. tourists soaking in culture with wonder-filled gazes; natives silently struggling to understand the gleam of polished unfamiliarity behind glass cases. we preserve relics in the name of culture but destroy the core around which our lives are centred. hdb blocks topple like dominoes, one after another: conversations in void decks of stout structures; neighbourly camaraderie in dim corridors; tiled sandy playgrounds crumble, strain to find form again in the rising dust. on a clean slate shiny skyscrapers rise.

new museums trap history but our branches are severed; white walls, high ceilings, grand arches are not the faded red brick and large number panels so easy on our eyes. our landscape is not a museum of our country.

somewhere foreign

and sometimes the skies here are just as blue,

grass just as green

just my soul wishes to find a shade of difference which would

justify this unwonted longing for another land

backward thoughts: stargazing

9/6

straying ten steps from our door in the late night moonshine

cocooned in coats and scarves, paper pyjama bottoms that cannot stand the wintry chill

the sky is waiting, ready to

pounce on us with renewed wonder each time:

showers of crystals embedded in midnight rock

i’ll never remember the galaxy closer in any moment,

cupping numb fingers around our eyes to soften the ambient glow

lying on asphalt, tender songs stitching memories together

the lyrics slip off our tongues in low whispers, no restraint under these boundless skies

the universe falling on us, within reach

silent awe

it’s real, it’s real.

beings trained to seek perfection

but built to love imperfections

and when i feel like i am treading these deserts alone

i just have to lift my lips to your name, to mean the words

and feel enclosed in the flowing harmonies of your love

backward thoughts: electric

8/6

I experienced it today- that elusive invincibility, lurking in the shadows of pure recklessness and spontaneity, the feeling of having nothing to lose together in a foreign land; recognising danger but knowing we were still tethered (what’s the worst that can happen?), getting lost, finding ourselves by unimaginable chance. Screaming, shouting, hugging, no restraint, that final burst across the road and the energy and feeling of magic that didn’t die long afterward, embedded like threads running through veins that couldn’t so easily disintegrate, ecstasy, complete wondrous disbelief with almost strangers now bright eyed and warmer with shared moments.

when it filters down to nuances

our eyes are the cruelest-

to us

unsent letters

I find unsent letters tucked

away in old files crammed with dog-eared scores: worn pages and rusted staples, graphite doodles and annotations

I couldn’t find her at graduation and i guess that’s

why the goodbyes and gratitudes are home with me still

in handwriting that has since changed; feelings that are no longer the same

the worth of lilac stock paper from the stationery store

adorned with gold-inked sentiment:

a couple weeks hesitance and these

words addressed to these names become irrelevant

do we send letters of fossilized feeling or keep words

fading with fond memory?

library ramblings

some things are hard to describe: the smell of old books, the sensation that overcomes me every time I step into the library. it is a place that is ever-changing; books pasted over with fresh alphabet stickers, slotted into age-old shelves which have seen their share of titles come and go. yet it is a place that radiates the same warmth, the same gentle noise of books knocking against shelves that is oddly comforting. books that I’ve seen hundreds of times from pre-teen years- the same blaring titles never fail to catch my eye, books of childhood past that I smile at upon seeing each time, books that I eventually pick up, books that i never do. things that make me wonder: strangers’ receipts pressed between the pages- did they get through the book or give up halfway like I sometimes do? I always decipher these half-faded names but never recognise any of them. there’s a whole library of books and I wonder if there’s an elusive book that my eyes skim across, that my fingers will always regret for not picking up, a book that I will absolutely love but never discover. I always thought that 9 was too early for the library to close, but I can’t change it. I will stay until five minutes before closing time, knowing that the automated announcement will prompt me when I need to leave, petering out with the remains of library-goers as the kind librarians stand at the doors and thank us for entering this place.