Memoirs of the Hopeful

Something keeps my mind pre-occupied unnecessarily at this pitch-black hour, like an extreme comedy enforced upon a lifeless outrigger sailing aimlessly over the immense, fogbound ocean. It holds captive all five senses, their purpose lost. It seizes my faculties, rendering me a hard-core inutile on the ever faithful ground. Much more, it punishes the last dregs of my breath. It screams king from its exploding, arrogant chest; and I am the enslaved soul on all pitiful fours, fettered and wounded. It spells dread in its countenance that I shudder and become weak at the knees. It lives in a prominent, arresting mansion over the hill this poor dreamer could only fancy about, as it murders the sullen truth that rides the silent and infinite ripples of black water -- putrid and nobody's wine nor tea. The phantom lingers its shameless exploits round me. 

As I don my tattered shirt and threadbare pants, which speak loudly of what it wants me to, exhausted with bloodshot eyes, I toy with the penetrating idea of how to escape, which is now a crime. How hapless this soul is, it could not sing anymore. But there should be a tunnel out! If not, I could dig my way out all day without its prying eyes noticing. I could outsmart my enemy, however skinned my hands and restless my heart would be. I have to. 

Now it seeks to suck out of my life, leaving me freezing in stiff air with the deafening, shrill cries of its mocking guards lurking in the dark, whose labyrinth-red eyes I can only see. Poised to battle against this mimicry of the devil, I pretend not to hear any of it, nor to imagine what creatures bear those eyes. I turn myself into a modest stone. I need to endure its bigotry. 

I close my eyes with a dying heartbeat. I swallow my saliva to quench a parched larynx, only to murmur within myself. I rest my mind from the convoluted pollution. I hope to muster a sleep. 

This is not a race to forever, nor a fruitless struggle. A triumphant claim looms over me.

Image: Toa Payoh, Singapore