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Moving People With Words

Poems on the MRT

The Walk Back by Tania De Rozario

 

Sitting at the airport, half past one
in the morning; people sleeping away
stopovers, bodies strewn across chairs
like forgotten luggage: I am alone,
a terminal one at Terminal One,
my bad puns lost on the empty seat

beside me. You were tossing and turning
the night you stayed, insomnia drenching
sheets bought together seven years
before, too big then, for mattress and frame
because a single bed was all we could
afford: No longer lovers, nor persuaded

by spatial restraints into each other’s arms,
we sleep intertwined anyway; the body
remembering what the mind forgets
about love: What the heart cannot help
but put away, put off, put to sleep
to move on: I will only go home

once your plane has flown off; cry
only once the distance between us
expands into miles, brave the walk
back past the hall that spells departure
in four different languages, none of which
I can articulate, nor will ever understand.

Published in Tender Delirium (2013), and first published in Softblow (2010)

Tania De Rozario is a writer and artist. Her latest collection, Dinner on Monster Island, (Harper Perennial, 2024), has been described as “sharp and searing” (Ms. Magazine), “unique” (Publishers Weekly), “a book with resonance” (Kirkus Reviews), “taut and riveting”; (LA Times), “elegant”, “droll”; and “magnetic”; (British Columbia Review). Tania’s writing has won the New Ohio Review Nonfiction Contest (2020) and the Muriel Craft Bailey Poetry Contest (2021), has been a finalist at the Lambda Literary Awards (2021) and has been published internationally in journals and anthologies. She lives on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, colonially known as Vancouver, Canada.

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Poems on the MRT is an initiative by the National Arts Council, in partnership with SMRT and Stellar Ace. Produced by Sing Lit Station, a local literary non-profit organisation, this collaboration displays excerpts of Singapore poetry throughout SMRT’s train network, integrating local literature into the daily experience of commuters. Look out for poems in English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil in trains on the East-West, North-South and Circle Lines, as well as videos created by local artists and featuring local poets in stations and on trains. The Chinese, Malay, and Tamil poems are available in both the original languages and English. To enjoy the full poems, commuters may read them on go.gov.sg/potm.

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