Rain trees along the road after a shower

After the shower the rain trees drip for an hour longer than the pavement stays dark. I walk the same stretch near Segar most mornings — not for exercise, for thinking. The canopy makes a tunnel that smells like wet bark and exhaust, which is an honest Singapore smell.

The samanea along this road are old enough that their roots have cracked the pavement in polite, predictable places. I step over the same three bumps every time. Cyclists pass on the left with a bell I have learned to recognise — the same delivery rider, most days, headphones in, rain cape flapping.

On mornings like this I carry a notebook in the inside pocket of my shirt so the pages do not curl. The first line is never good. The third sometimes is. By the time I reach the park connector the shower is a memory and the sun is arguing with the clouds over the LRT line.

People ask if I walk for health. I walk because the flat is quiet in a way that makes thoughts loud, and because the trees do not care whether I finish a paragraph. They drop petals on my shoes and move on.

Segar feels like a town that was told to grow uphill and obeyed. The market is down; home is up; the rain trees line the compromise between the two. I have lived here long enough that the route is muscle memory — which puddle to avoid, which branch to duck under, which auntie will be feeding cats by the bin centre.

I wrote this note standing under the largest tree on the bend, waiting for a text I did not need to answer. The phone stayed in my pocket. The tree kept dripping. That is the whole discipline of this blog: notice first, type later.

There is a bench further on that nobody sits on because it faces the carpark. I use it anyway when my knees complain. From there the rain trees look like one continuous roof — messy, alive, indifferent to the block numbers painted on the flats behind them.

If you walk this route, go slow for the fifty metres under the bend. That is where the drip is loudest and where I always remember something I forgot to buy at the market. Wesley.