The rain stopped an hour before I left the flat, but the park connector had not got the message. Leaves stuck to the path in pale sheets. Water pooled at the low points where cyclists usually accelerate. I wore the thin jacket that never dries properly on the balcony and still felt the damp in my shoulders by the bridge.
The canal was brown — not dramatically, not news-worthy, just the ordinary colour of runoff after a morning storm. I stood on the bridge longer than I do on dry days, when I treat the crossing as a checkpoint between errands. A cleaner hosed the pavement below. The sound echoed under the arch in a way that made the traffic on the road feel far away.
Looking up, I saw laundry on a high floor — sheets pinned despite the wind, pegs clustered at the corners as if someone had learned which direction the gusts come from. I wondered whether they would dry before the next shower, and whether the person pinning them cared, or whether the ritual mattered more than the result.
I took the photograph in my head rather than on my phone. My camera roll is full of brown water and grey sky already. What I wanted to remember was the scale: how small the bridge felt under the blocks, how the canal kept its level without asking anyone’s permission to do so.
Further along, the path smelled of wet earth and someone’s fried lunch drifting from a window. A runner passed with headphones loud enough for me to hear the beat. I stepped aside onto the grass verge, shoes picking up sand. The heron was not there. It rarely is when I bring expectations.
At the bend near the sports hall, an auntie walked a dog that wanted to investigate every puddle. She apologised twice though I had not been inconvenienced. We fell into step for a minute, exchanged comments about the weather in the polite shorthand of neighbours who recognise faces but not names, and parted at the fork without exchanging numbers.
I cut back toward Boon Keng instead of completing the loop. My socks were damp. The lift mirror showed hair flattened by humidity. Upstairs, the corridor smelled of detergent — someone had washed towels at midday, unusual but not unwelcome. I hung my jacket on the balcony chair anyway, knowing it would still feel clammy by morning.
I made tea at home and opened the window a finger-width. The canal is not visible from the eighth floor, but I know its direction the way you know where the sea is on an island — not always in sight, always present. Rain or shine, it receives what the city sends and carries it away without commentary. I wrote two sentences in my notebook and closed it before the steam from the cup fogged the page.
Later, when the sky cleared, the park connector dried in patches — pale footprints where runners had already returned. I did not go out again. The morning walk had been enough.
→ kopi before the office crowd
