let lemons be angry

The black eyeliner doesn't mean a thing. Neither do the earrings, or the yellow bag, or the red shoes. They are just colours, my trick, my armour. A door longing to be opened, but which stays closed. Is this it then? A long journey into illustrating the self with colours, only to end in envy of the mediocre people on the train who have never thought of fabricating any trick, any armour. For I can't peel away the layers fast enough to show my vulnerability. Surprise, surprise, she needs, she feels, she cries, she can't hold all her bags with the two hands she has. The down syndrome girl who dried her umbrella on the down syndrome boy. The 16-year-old couple who wore ugly shop and save uniforms and smiled at each other across the vegetable aisle. The servant auntie and uncle who shared bee hoon in the canteen and rode off on the same bicycle everyday. Envy reveals what we are not, have not, and can't get. Ironic, like a castle in a fishbowl to entertain a goldfish who has no use for human buildings. A waterfall and a branch to make a leopard believe his glass enclosure is really a jungle. I'm a fake. Here i go, realising that it takes more than fabric to make a man. I'll go back into my past, where it all started, in the place i was born. I don't belong to that country, but at least i have the documents to tell me i am, some solid ground to pin me down into reality and reassure me that some things don't change.