A TASTE OF HOME

I cross a winding street where the shophouses arc, a skip of faith beyond the sheltered sight as the rush of city life dashes and blares. The walls are muddied, shedding their overcoat throughout their golden jubilee. Decaying to pale bones of earth. The upper floors lay dormant, unused for but its entity —

A phantom trail of receipts and ledgers from unborn associations.

The strays here roam in packs, adolescents wandering for their mother's milk. They collude, they quarrel, and flee at the feet of mischievous children. Immigrants dominate the wares with what they know — a taste of home. The sidewalks are maroon-splattered with betel nut spit. The rusty poles have abstracted: losing definition, graining, and hazing to an unclear function. The outliving trees become protectors as the vines droop, spirits collect, and a shrine plants itself. Shells of fruit cuddle with plastic bags, and suddenly man is indistinguishable from nature.

There were two men with a single leg, then the husk of a motorcycle lying on its shoulder. Then a third begged the next day and has been begging ever since. The addicts never begged, rather they insisted with a smile and a switchblade. They disassembled machinery in the shadows for a fix. For sustenance of the state, for a rifting evening where life reveals itself to be capable of joy. Hunger pangs distort into trivial yelps — childlike wailing and pointless echo. Despite the grooves of their ribcage bleeding through their shirt, hollowed skulls, and bulging eyes that signal atrophy and delirium. Preying on the weak, answering to no God,

No mighty God would abandon-
No abandoner would have the gall to ask for offerings in a world with so little to offer, Yet mighty is His name and hallowed are His mystic ways. Your followers praying for the weak, yet there is no answer to me and all in the range of my rage. It is what you treat it, as it is one-way communication.

The eateries are delightful, a stroll will treat you to wafts of roasting chestnuts and steamy soup. Oil crashes and erupts, the sizzling hisses while the clatter of woks threatens to ignite sparks. Ancient recipes remain an heirloom outliving the bloodlines which concocted them. A rare constant in a metamorphosing land. Shaping a quaint yet fragile harmony in the alleys where walks of life stagger and gallop. Within the midst of the charms lie broken thoughts and putrefying flesh, a ubiquitous atmosphere that envelops this little enclave with a miasma of negligence.

I am lost in the thousands of stories a wandering eye can pursue. Coffined in the cacophony of passersby chatter so deep, tangling myself with tales that seem to write themselves. In my wayward pursuit, I see the Sun has dipped beneath the towers, and my palms still clench the notes my mother gave me to buy eggs.