1.35°N, 103.82°E

 

Welcome, It(’s). Singapore. ... I love Singapore.

Hi, my name is… 

I carry a smile from my dad

And a tear from my mom.

Who are you? Are you from the MOM? Here’s my IC for you to see—

​

No, no, I am not from the Ministry

I am just a black-haired girl playing with geography on our birthday.

See, if I could scrunch up these coordinates,

We could be primary school classmates

Or even twins with the same surname.

 

Or maybe we already are—

We just never saw each other.

One in the room, drawing on paper

One in the sun, drawing on clouds

Real sandcastles. Those palms containing the life of Bedok North Avenue 4,

Photo framing this animation of schoolkids singing in the rain.

Let this nation’s soil run through those old green hands.* 

Bedok, North, Avenue, 4,

that place (you) must know better than (I) do... 

 

when that is done, we shall take our morning glories

to strangle this senseless wall between lukal and foreynur

 

sigh, in this dusty air, simply thinking about air sandcastles

can be more tiring than COVID-19 testing

so, just for now, we leh in the garden bed, we stop think.

 

* This line is after Gilbert Koh’s poem, “Garden City”