Tag: memory

a tribute to a place that will no longer be

kellyLeave a comment

(captured and written in May 2024)

This is the ninth time in my life that I have moved. When you’re moving, especially on a tight deadline and alone, your brain goes on autopilot, throwing belongings into boxes or trash bags at a merciless pace. Whatever space and time cannot afford ends their journey with you unceremoniously, like saying goodbye to tour guides in a foreign city. Rooms get colder and larger and you start to notice the colour of your walls. The day you first moved in will feel the most familiar it has ever felt and will ever feel.

This is the ninth time I have moved, but it doesn’t get any easier. Besides this unassuming flat behind that double-locked cobalt blue door, there’s no other place that I’ve called home for longer, and I fear that I will only continue to feel this way for as long as I’m not done forging my own path out here. I remember the last time I was in school in Singapore, I had promised myself that I would make every day after that life count for something, but what I didn’t also register was that counting begets so many goodbyes.

Thank you for the past 2 years Abingdon, for giving me and my best friends a space to laugh, cry, fall in love, eat, learn, host, and rest, and for seeing me off on the final day of my educational journey. I can’t remember the last time I showed someone around this place but I know I was proud. I hope the next three will love you just as much.

REBORN!

kellyLeave a comment

ROLL 1 + 2 [JULY 2020]

Camera: Pentax IQZoom 90MC

Film: FUJICOLOR C200

being able to wander with great company, even with no objective or direction, has been such a wonderful experience that Covid made me think i might never get to come close to again this year. 

for the first time, i used a roll of film over a few weeks instead for a single event. when i first saw the developed pictures, i was filled with so much warmth that i couldn’t stop smiling like an idiot. after all, these are the people i love the most. 

Continue reading “REBORN!” →

EUPHORIA

kellyLeave a comment

EUPHORIA! — the event of the year for most of the students in my JC to celebrate the end of the school year! I’m glad that I got to be part of the backbone for this event in council. The most surreal part about the whole day was watching my own little doodle making its worldly manifestation on everyone’s shirts–people I love, some not so much; people I’ve known for years, others only for a few days. The paths I’ve crossed this year are really not to be understated. Every friendship and encounter, whether pleasant or fleeting, matters.

Continue reading “EUPHORIA” →

a eulogy for a dreamy sunday afternoon

kellyLeave a comment

i. sunlight seeping in borrows a rosy hue from tinted window glass, dancing off your tousled hair.

ii. the stereo murmurs a dull synth-pop tune to colour the silence, inside the lines.

iii. buildings we pass melt into a nondescript blur, like abstractions of ink on a drenched book.

iv. the weight of my baggage surrenders to the one tugging at my chest. i know i am not half-dreaming.

v. there’s only so much i can read from the back of your neck, like newspapers shrouded by the dark of morning.

iv. you mean so many things to me, things no tongue could explain. not even to myself.

iii. this silence amidst noise is killing me. i would rather burst into a rhapsodic wail, out of tune.

ii. this moment will not yield to captivity. like a firefly in a jar, the only glow i see is put out by the last breath of a dying dream.

i. heart and soul, mind and soul, maybe it’s time to let this firefly go?