Reverie

A wishful orphan steps into the street – the blaze of engines and whirr of wheels surge suddenly toward him; an Indian baker’s toasted dough and an ah beng mechanic’s greasy garments waft about him, dancing like the messy mosquitoes he can feel circling convoluted paths around his collar. He shakes them off, as a dog might waggle his tail to slap away the oppressive offenders borne from the sweltering summer and continues crawling across the lanes. He reaches with his hands and feels lamppost after lamppost passing by, each one a blazing imprint in his mind’s eye, a bench here, the bustle of a mama shop there, the rich scent of flaming incense and fiery curry blending in mental hues of red and oranges and yellows; the grainy leather and pungent oil of another era’s cobbler – it is the rich perfume of the Bedok market.

He listens. Sometimes the noises scare him – if he cannot anticipate the rev of the cars as he does with the chirping of birds, passing the numerous bird shops – they are violet and green and aquamarine according to their hums, each one a distinct note in the melody of his mind. Mostly though, they intrigue him, two-dozen interweaving questions constantly buzzing around him like eager flies, children asking to go to the reservoir, parents lightly quarreling, couples tightly rustling their hands in muted intimate whispers, the snow of a child’s crying.

He staggers down the rocky path and feels the jagged tar until the texture eventually becomes sandy. He notes how his sole makes love with each individual rock in the sand, every one having a unique dimension, edge, and cut, like the beige, ash, nude, pastel people who run past him indeterminately and the cyclists who yell at him to walk straight. thirty, he counts, twenty, ten, five, and one. He stops. He is at his favorite spot: on a bench floating above the reservoir, out over the deathly still water, calmly swaying with the rare graciously buffeting wind.

…

……

………

In a moment,

he enters a glorious stupor

and the sunlight bounces off

the glassy curls of the reservoir

into his eyes and coalesce in

the holes of the lightly rustling trees

behind him,

where flowers never bloom and leaves

fall all year round on the dusted gravel

which have filled his weary sandals

and he knows all this because he knows

darkness

like no one else and the reservoir is his mind.

It can swallow him up

with every ripple brushing past

plastic hands that reach upward

beneath the surface to shake him out of reverie.

and though he is already engulfed in darkness,

he closes his milky eyes.