Natalie Foo Mei-Yi, Singapore
dusk, february 2021
after “Kranji woodlands cleared by mistake: How it happened”, The Straits Times, 23 Feb 2021
Beware the vast field,
its shield of command,
the clearing that flanks
a green path for ghosts.
dawn, october 2021
Kranji lives in an alternate dimension. Which is to say I look at the wall in my room sometimes and see vines snaking against cracking paint, thin nodes climbing picture frames, springing leaves. Once in my kitchen, I heard the squeak and scamper of squirrels in the cupboards but, when I opened them, they were gone. Twice, a small green snake from that other-universed woodland found its way to my front porch. The first time it happened, I thought nothing of it. The second time though, I knew. I wonder each time it happens if our continuum of life will intersect and if I’ll stub my toes on plump lichen-slick roots again and stumble, palm on bark. My mother used to talk about spirits wandering among us, drifting in the overlap of realms, leaving traces we can hear, smell and see. I think if I close my ears, nose and eyes tightly enough, I may one day neither remember nor imagine it.
Natalie Foo Mei-Yi is a writer by profession. After studying literature, film and philosophy at university, she embarked on an eclectic series of jobs as a film reviewer, a police intelligence officer, a bartender, a creative copywriter, an architectural magazine editor, the writer-editor at a performing arts centre, and an arts writer. Now, she writes for a living and makes poetry and art in private, surrounded by kiddy clutter, 80s and 90s cassettes, sci-fi DVDs, a lifetime collection of books, and a hoard of shells, twigs and rocks gathered from nature trails.