Travelling Muses

Creative non-fiction

By Michelle Khoo

There’s no silence as startlingly rich as that of shuffling footsteps. 

The swishing of a skirt. 

The curious murmur of a mobile phone. 

She’s unusually loud in her yellow checked dress with a brown cardigan. 

There’s a deafening screech in how she positions herself in the middle of the carriage, a hunched figure peering blatantly out the window. Enormous, complicated eyes that teeter on the edge of her eyelids, intent at the trees whizzing past. 

Around her fades the hushed thuds of fingers landing on a tiny touchscreen, accentuating the bizarreness of her actions. 

One may poke their heads around the carriage opening. To catch sight of her first. Because who else would be rather shell-shocked at the magnificent world enveloping us, not at the palm-sized omnipotent one swallowing everyone whole. 

And one may say that this is her first time outside. Or rather affectionately, she’s a village monger who has never stepped foot into technological Singapore. 

She’s perhaps relieved that she doesn’t wobble like a sullen creature on the escalator. That her feet find ground and her lungs find air. After all, she’s been an ornament, polished and bronze. A trinket too treasured to accessorise.

She’s perhaps spat out something about going to the market. Not like she hasn’t done that everyday till it becomes a dangerous affair; one that imprints her footsteps onto the gravel footpath so she can navigate her way in the dark. 

She’s perhaps feeling the urge to go. To go where, you may ask. She’s not too sure either. But everyone’s going. Everyone knows which stop they are getting off, everyone smashes into a blinding brushstroke, everyone yonders in the colorful spits of acrylic. She’s just a drifter over the unpainted canvas, feeling terribly alone. Therefore, being fast must mean being happy (at least in her oyster of a definition).

She’s perhaps a little too creased for the smooth edges of the city. Where she lives, everyone prowls the jungles stealthily, kneeling on the grass to spray the little earthworms with soil, or to lick the sugar from a stale gum. Now this world is a little too advanced for that. We figuratively do so, not literally. 

She’s perhaps fighting this sweet, overripe cashew of a feeling. After all, cashew shells are equivalent to empty bullet shells. A blast of intestines, colourful scents and sounds, amorphous figures taking shape into lovely characters, a blank canvas of silent murder. 

She’s perhaps here, flapping her pigmented arms in a futile effort. A dull stare that cannot harm a fly even if she willed herself to. She’s curious, but what for? Not for the love of her life, but the humour at the life that unwound like a cassette tape, fast and monotonous. 

She’s perhaps possessed by wild abandonment. She doesn’t mind if she blasts music on a pair of cheap headsets, lifts her skirt a little to catch the wind, presses the odour of shaving cream along the window’s outline. Becomes a little more carefree than the wind rustling noisily past her eardrums. 

She’s going to go back to where she came from. Or maybe she’s going to reach the end of the line, feel weary and lean against a shoulder. If she’s not dead, she will wake up to find herself alone, cheek upon a warm palm. 

“Hello miss, are you alright? The train has reached the end of the line, you can take the next train when it comes.”

She’ll just smile, say “thank you,” a small mumble of “sorry” or what not, and exit the station. Maybe board the train that’s going in the reverse direction, to get back to where she came from. But it’s a long journey, and anyways everyone at home is celebrating a summer day of their own, without her completing the canvas.  

I’m perhaps assuming too much of her. After all, how many times can one gaze upon the souls pooling at one’s own irises, and say that they recognise its shallow depths? This is my first time out of the house in a while, and I’m grateful the air’s not choking me. 

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Michelle Khoo is a Secondary 4 student studying at Raffles Girls’ School. She enjoys reading dystopian and science fiction. She writes as a way to express her thoughts on the complexities of human nature, something that she can’t articulate verbally.