his thoughts were of the sky

noon time and i walked to my car, the keys hidden deep in my pocket, both my hands in my pockets, an air of diguised nonchalance as i spy your form in the yard. you are happy.

that i just received an email from a long-lost lecturer whose life i assumed went on in the university in the same way that mine did - that it was comforting to know that most things didn't change while my life did - that he is about to transfer to NTU's humanities faculty. that i am thinking of the lull period in the university right now - that it will mostly be deserted and i think about the last time i walked through the library, the last time of walking past the shelves with aphra behn on them.
that i walked back from the train station and thought of many things while i was strolling under the wide, night sky, my hands tucked into my pockets and whistling a sad song to the tune of the song in my i-pod shuffle, the material of my fred perry bag sending off waves of refractions.
that i no longer care about most things, save thinking.

i strolled past the closed shops - closed since it was after 11pm and the odd fruit sellers were hawking their cheap durians and the odd old man would look at me with a glimmer in his eyes.
somewhere far below the curtain of the night sky, a boy sits at his worn out couch, pointing at the characters acting out real-life on the television screen. he passes a random comment and his sister, sitting on the floor beside the worn-out leg of a coffee table responds to the comment. they both laugh.
below a streetlight, a man trudges home from his lover's home, worn out by the endless drudgery of life. his hair is wet from the shower that he had just taken and tiny beads of seat sparkle on his forehead - he thinks of love but quickly sends the thought away. oh, to live for the moment!
in a tiny room, a woman breastfeeds her newborn daughter and thinks of the full month party that they will be holding on her behalf this coming sunday.
the show ends and the boy looks around his flat. it is the same, day-in, day-out. the images and situations he has just watched on tv play out endlessly in his mind - the male and the female, of love and of a chance meeting in a foreign country - he thinks that perhaps, that will happen to him one day. then he catches himself smiling, shakes himself and almost laughs at himself for being so foolish - how could such a thing ever happen in real life?
he looks at his brother quickly to see if he has caught on to the emotions he thinks he has betrayed on his face. but there is none.
the living room are still the same, the same furniture that he has looked at since he was a child. he can hear the sounds coming from the cars speeding by on the highway next to his house.
perhaps one day, things would change, one day, many days ahead, but today is the present. until his mother called his name to attend to a mundane matter, his thoughts were of the sky.