When life and space seem empty, hope and renewal happen.
🌌🚉🌌
Twilight dawns, the platform stands— Empty. Even the tiles breathe slow. The schedule board blinks, an eye refusing to close. A sweet wrapper’s slow dance in the draft, A vending machine’s guttural hum. Soft footsteps in the distance, an unwanted memory.
🌫️✨🌫️
Half-drunk coffee, newspapers read. A lilac scarf lingers on its arm, Drifting in the wind. Every object, a person in haste. November’s platform—in darkness. Unlit.
🌧️🚉🌧️
My steps slow with the train’s chug— Her missed graduation. Mama, in bed, unseen. His violin recital. Each memory station a reminder, A rest stop.
🍂🕰️🍂
The station alit, quiet. The empty platform serves— To rebuild. Renew. Old memories vague— Yet a part Of each turnstile.
🌙🚦🌙
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The Berlin Wall fell this day, November 9th, 1989.
It took just one night for its pieces to shatter.
The walls that surround hearts can take a lifetime to break.
🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
50-year-old Thomas Weiss stood before a crumbling wall, wielding a hammer he wasn’t sure he wanted to use. His wife, Hannah, and twin sons had resided in the free zone for years–because she wanted to.
The wall had come down in 1989–ten years to this day. The shattered pieces lay on the ground, waiting to come together.
Thomas wondered if they would–but some walls sealed hearts.
And stood taller.
🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
Youngsters still came to hack at the bricks that hadn’t yet given way, breaking out in raucous hollers as they did.
Thomas watched them, his memories more dislodged with each blow of the hammer. Each cheer he heard felt like an accusation—like Hannah’s last words to him.
He wasn’t sure he envied the wall for coming down.
Before he slammed the door of the family home–sharper than the barbed wire that accompanied the bricks.
A young man spotted him standing, still in a reverie. He stretched out his hand–a small piece of the wall lay in his palm.
Thomas hesitated. He wasn’t sure if it was just unwanted history coming apart, or a piece of his own heart.
🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
His wife appeared amidst the dust and fallen wall splinters.
Older.
Strange.
The shadow of the wall that was, stood between them–too real.
Freedom felt foreign–the hardest reunions were the ones one didn’t prepare for.
🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
He dropped his hammer, the crowd’s joy flooding over him. He and Hannah didn’t embrace–but stood together.
Breathing the air of freedom for the first time–
In decades.
Their unity had begun—in silence.
🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
As dawn broke, the wall had nearly crumbled completely. The crowd had vanished, save for a few stragglers.
The bricks had come apart in just one night in 1989. His peace with Hannah would take a lifetime of rebuilding.
The Berlin wall had finally fallen. The one in his heart–still solid brick.
And had to shatter–within.
🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱🧱
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On this balmy November day, all of us stand beneath skies that have seen storms–but remember our voices amid the loud roar of thunder.
We are the palm trees–we bend, straighten, sometimes lose a few branches when there are storms in our lives–but we reach our own rhythm.
Our dance goes on despite the rain.
🌿🌊🌤️
My palm fronds dance in the wind
Watch kites kiss the sky
Tasting the metallic air–
Hearing, knowing, but not listening.
🌬️🪁🍃
They sense the tumult of the clouds–
The world in chaos, deer running.
The whoosh of wind and sands shift
My branches bend.
🌪️🦌🍂
The faint smell of sea salt
From waves that poured over.
But my tattered trunk remains.
My seeds sprout on new soil.
🌱🌊☀️
The calm blue sky returns–
My fronds sway in a new dance.
They feel the sea’s breeze as they traipse.
Hearing–and knowing their whisper.
🌤️🍃🌊
Yet I stand, listening, still dancing,
Knowing when to bend
And when to straighten
To my tune.
🌿🌬️🌞
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Today marks the anniversary of a milestone in women’s political power in America—the election of the first woman to Congress. We mirror that femininity in Singapore by celebrating the Samsui Woman, a female labourer commonly seen at construction sites in the 1950s and 60s. Opportunities for women have increased over the years—and her scarf, and spirit, live on. She wields the scarlet scarf of strength.
🧣🇸🇬🧣🇸🇬🧣🇸🇬🧣🇸🇬
The evening air was dense with the usual Singapore humidity–and tales once woven. Despite the tropical overwhelm, Singaporeans walked to the polls.
Outside on a railing was a scarf–red, fluttering in the November wind. It hung a poignant scarlet against the grey twilight. No one saw the woman who donned it, or her dust-streaked blue blouse.
A heavy blouse no wind could lift.
Mdm Ong was a Samsui Woman who lived in Singapore of the 1950s–a construction worker who laid bricks when women weren’t meant to construct. Along with others like her, she built a city that never knew–or wanted to know–her name.
She had toiled when families prayed, hauling beams twice her weight. She out-dreamt her pay.
She returned every Singapore election–not as a ghost, but as a witness.
An elections officer noticed her form in the glass, in a blue samfoo, head bound in a telltale red scarf. She watched as the women of the time filed past to the polling booths, pens ready to mark their chosen candidate.
She blinked, and the Samsui ghost left, leaving only the faint, but comforting scent of earth.
The elections staff sealed the ballot boxes. The scarf fluttered to the ground. The elections officer picked it up, and wore the proud memory around her neck.
🧣🇸🇬🧣🇸🇬🧣🇸🇬🧣🇸🇬
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Young roots grab the Earth Connected plants in same soil Trimmed and well anchored
🌱🌿🌎✨🌳
New roots stretch to sky Their hands reach for door slammed shut. Pull beyond comfort.
🌳🌤️🌿🌱💫
Roots and branches meet Pull and reach with combined strength. Fight to reach and grow.
🌿🌞🌳💪🌱
Roots grow with branches anchor. Only when melded.
🌳💫🌱🌿🌤️
Original Map of the Self memoir by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. Any AI tags are conincidental
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If I could chart my life as a map, it would be done with chalk–with some parts erased, rewritten, and finally, merged as one.
I have chartered the mental highway that connects its different parts-some with clarity, others in brain fog that’ refuses to clear.
Each line I draw is jagged. Unclear. It smudges, the ink making the words on the map difficult to read.
Through the smudged ink, chalkdust and jagged lines, I move forward, seeking a self-and drawing that is complete.
✨
A teacher’s map is one that I’ve always wanted to charter–my mum, being a teacher, has drawn one of her own.
I drew mine with some difficulty because the chalk flaked at many points.
Flaky chalk defined the starting point of my map. I had wanted to chart a legal map–to travel along life’s road as a successful litigator.
Then—
My brain received two unwanted visitors-pituitary brain tumours
Introspection and altruism held the chalk–and drew for me.
Charting the Teacher’s map, with the noble goal of shaping lives–became, literally and metaphorically, a more attractive draw.
So it was that I reached the first destinations along my map as a teacher—the National Institute of Education and the Nanyang Technological University.
✨
The road I drew–then travelled on–was not without its bumps and resulting bruises
My next stop on the road was at an all-girl’s convent teaching seven-year-old mademoiselles(the school has a French history).
The bump along the road? They didn’t behave like mademoiselles.
They did as little girls would do–they constantly chattered.
Like raucous boys would, they messed up the classroom–every day.
But they also called me “mummy”.
Then–I knew that the Teacher’s Map would lead to a Treasure Chest.
I travelled along the map to secondary schools.
The next stop was one in the North of Singapore, where I realised that teaching wasn’t just about classroom lesson delivery–it was life lesson delivery.
Part of the map was drawing FOR the students–shaping their confidence as musicians, serving as their lead singer at school rock concert performances, and boosting their linguistic capabilities via English and Literature.
More shaping–and chartering.
This time I drew my map–and maps for other teachers–as an English and Literature subject coordinator.
Some maps were tasks to draw–when conjugating a grammatical sentence was difficult.
When a student wrote a full, five-page essay with a single–just one–period, or full stop, at the end.
When I had to help an abusive student navigate his relationship with his mother.
When some students smoked in class, in full view.
✨
But the teaching map wasn’t the only one I was to charter.
The writing map cried out to this teacher to draw as well.
I had chartered the map to a crossroads.
The teaching map would trace a route of stability, structure and control.
But not satisfaction–
Of creation. Of being in control of one’s voice.
The writing map held that satisfaction.
But not structure or stability.
But I realised that I didn’t have to make that choice–
I drew both.
One map chartered the other.
Their efforts produced the map of a creative writing teacher.
One who got students to produce storyboards.
Who also got students to draw their maps after sitting for the O level examinations.
✨
The maps are still being drawn.
Each is hard to chart or follow on its own..
But both have to work together-
For financial security.
Personal satisfaction.
For the arrival of a whole soul at its destination.
✨
Original Map of the Self memoir by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. Any AI tags are conincidental
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This week is one of introspection for many—on souls loved and lost. So, we pause to ponder the echoes of fire and ash. A volcano’s eruption reminds us that even the strongest forces bear grief and must weaken to renew—and strengthen. The chaos reshapes land—and spirit.
From the ash, new life begins.
🔥🌌🌋🔥
The giant rises, stirs in silence
Before its rousing roar;
Its grief in our spirit, not just in stone
The sky drew breath before it soared.
🔥🌌🌋🔥
Tongues of flame curl in the night,
A loud roar tearing calm;
The mountain’s fire, bursts of grief,
Shakes decades of quiet and peace.
🌄🔥🌫️🔥
What lies beneath the mountain’s soil
Crawls in full, or part, to the top;
So, it burns what it reaps not
And what no longer serves.
🌋💨🌑🔥
The fire cools, its soil reshapes
The new form of the world;
From ashes’ cradle, new spirit made
Life charts its own return.
🌱🌄✨🔥
The giant sleeps once more —
But in perfect slumber,
Her dreams of green
Of peace on every shore.
🌿💤🌍✨
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All Souls’ Day blanketed the pavements and roads in velvet black and the dim light of street lamps; anything but a typical day for a little pet dog.
Snowball stationed herself at her home’s bay window, hoping to unsettle the
patrons at the coffee shop opposite with her insistent, barking overtures.
She didn’t have mischief in mind that day; instead, she stood at the window, each paw trembling, hackles raised.
🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤
The air froze with biting cold; atypical for Singapore, a country with heat and
humidity as its middle name.
A chill numbed the air indoors; the smell of damp leaves pervaded the air. I
concentrated on my book review, for the first time donning an outdated cotton
sweater.
Then—the low, persistent growls.
Snowball had positioned herself in front of my bedroom wall, paws stiff, nails
clicking on the floor.
An almost-human whisper grazed my ear. My breath caught, and my jaw dropped. as it looked around.
🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤
The little West Highland Terrier lunged at the wall. A long silence followed.
Too long.
Then, a faint shimmer—the ambiguous outline of a silhouette.
Lost.
Caught between Heaven and Earth.
Asking—
Just for a name.
My heartbeat synced with its pulse—
One that echoed for a presence.
The little dog had guided—
And found.
🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤
“Snowball. It’s alright. No need.”
Her cue not to bark.
She obeyed and lay down, finally calm.
The room felt—
Lighter.
Warmer, with the whisper now unheard.
But the chill was a permanent guest.
Teasing a little dog wasn’t the name of the lost soul’s game—
It had asked the little terrier for guidance.
To where it belonged.
The whisper left. But at night, Snowball still faced the wall–and heard the clicks.
🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤
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Warm air turns, its cool breath gracing my fingertips.
Asphalt steam rises, white beneath faint sun’s glow.
A crow caws — the cool air’s rattle.
🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️
The leaves whisper, now a guttural rustle.
The crow’s caw, a sharp screech in the ear.
Chimneys clear their throats with fiery puff.
Frost builds on wooden eaves.
🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️
Woodsmoke razes the throat.
Wisps of warm, frost-tinged breath fill the air.
Pine scent turns to rust — the Earth’s belt tightens.
Skin prickles beneath old warmth’s shun.
🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️
Glass panes fog; my form shows — then goes.
A new light berates the cooling twilight.
Crumbling crackle under boots — it comes,
And the Earth welcomes it with pause.
We hear the world as it turns cold.
🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️
Soiled roots, kissed by golden hue.
Leaves cling to iron bars, their recall heavy.
Warm air turns, its cool breath gracing my fingertips.
Asphalt steam rises, white beneath faint sun’s glow.
A crow caws — the cool air’s rattle.
🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️
The leaves whisper, now a guttural rustle.
The crow’s caw, a sharp screech in the ear.
Chimneys clear their throats with fiery puff.
Frost builds on wooden eaves.
🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️
Woodsmoke razes the throat.
Wisps of warm, frost-tinged breath fill the air.
Pine scent turns to rust — the Earth’s belt tightens.
Skin prickles beneath old warmth’s shun.
🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️
Glass panes fog; my form shows — then goes.
A new dawn berates the cooling twilight.
Crumbling crackle under boots — it comes,
And the Earth welcomes it with pause.
🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️🍂❄️🍁❄️🍂❄️
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Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.
Who’s the fairest of them all? It depends on the species.
👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽
Elon delivered another interview with trademark poise—dapper, and
with his 3000-year-old alien rhetoric.
His usual bald claims and antics drew chuckle pools from the audience;
the hosts had assimilated his publicity stunts. In a Space X hanger
none could breach, Elon polished a capsule like no other–
It hummed.
His desperate calls to his home planet were always received by silence.
The capsule choked–then finally blinked. The guttural sound was NOT
receptive.
“Return denied. Earth quarantine in effect.”
Elon sighed and updated the capsule. “Still can’t come home. With this
olive green skin, my plastic surgeon’s getting too many calls.”
👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽👽
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The Getting Literal Writing Alcove 