Block 18 by Ian Ong

"Safe distancing ambassadors conduct daily surveillance checks" — The Straits Times, April 2020

I knew this slide by its heat —

the yellow plastic burning

the backs of my thighs

every August afternoon.

The bars were red then too,

though I never thought of them as bars.

Then.

Circuit Breaker, April:

they taped the frame off

with the same yellow

as the slide.

Do not enter.

Do not touch.

Do not

I walked past it some mornings,

just to hear something —

the angsana leaves

turning in the wet heat,

a mynahs argument

three floors up,

the blue benches

holding nobody.

The pagoda roof had always looked

like it was guarding something.

Now I understood what.

When they lifted the tape

the children did not come back.

Not all of them.

Not the way they used to —

the shrieking, the dares,

the wet grass smell of a whole afternoon

spent falling,

scraped knees,

crying for ah gong and ah ma

to nurse me back.

The slide is still yellow.

The bars are still red.

But I am now in my teens

standing at the void deck

keeping my distance

from a playground

that was never mine to begin with —

only borrowed, the way all childhoods are, before the world learns the word

containment.

I am Ian Ong, a student writer. I write poetry and essays in my free time just to get my feelings off my chest and I write just to reflect. In my writing, I explore themes like growing up, nostalgia or local culture. I hope that Singapore's literary scene will continue to flourish and soar to great heights in the future.

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