Murmur 3 · Serangoon

Bus shelter pause

The shelter is glass on three sides which makes waiting feel like standing inside an aquarium for commuters. I arrive early to watch people arrive late. Nobody runs here unless the bus appears as a dot.

Route numbers fade on the sign from years of sun. I memorised them as a teenager and still recite them when anxious. Ritual beats scrolling when the phone battery is low.

An uncle feeds pigeons at the far end though signs discourage it. The birds know his schedule better than I know mine. They lift together when a lorry backfires and settle when he clucks softly.

Waiting teaches horizontal thinking. Vertical ambition quiets for seven minutes. I notice how the bench bolts rust in patterns that resemble maps of islands nobody visits.

A mother adjusts her child strap twice before the bus comes. The child watches my pen move across paper and I pretend to write something important. Sometimes the important thing is being witnessed without speaking.

When the bus turns the corner, bodies rearrange into a queue that was never agreed aloud. Politeness is choreography here. I let an older woman board first and she thanks the driver for a stop I have never heard announced.

I do not board. This pause was the destination. I walk back toward the void deck photographing nothing on my phone just to hold the light.

Void deck noon light appears in the second image: pillars, floor games faded by feet, a bicycle chained to a railing that has seen better paint. The shelter and the deck are siblings separated by thirty metres and one mood.

I think about how many stories begin with waiting and never record the wait itself. This murmur is the wait without the arrival.

Tomorrow I might take the bus to Jurong and back for no reason. Today I only needed the shelter to teach me stillness without a meditation app.

Murmur 3 stayed in draft while I tested endings that refused to moralise. I want readers to leave with sensation, not instructions.

Serangoon humidity returned before publishing. The paragraph about rain still felt accurate even though the sky cleared.

I read aloud in the kitchen. The fridge hum exposed lazy verbs and rewarded concrete nouns like railing, cup, stair.

If your estate differs from mine, substitute your own landmarks mentally. The emotional scale should still fit.

Notebook pages for this murmur carry smudges from teh tarik. Digital copies hide that history yet keep the sentences.