The canal where herons pretend to be statues
I left the flat intending to buy screws. Hardware shop closed for stocktake. The canal path was the alternate route home and became the point.
Water levels were low enough to expose a rim of green algae that looked velvet from a distance and less flattering up close. A heron stood on one leg on a maintenance ladder submerged years ago. It watched me with the disinterest of something that knows it can fly. Cyclists passed on my left, bells polite, tyres hissing.
I count bridges on this path when my head is noisy. One: steel rails cold even in afternoon. Two: painted blue, graffiti removed but ghosts remain. Three: where teenagers film each other attempting tricks that will never go viral. By the third I usually turn back. Today I continued because the screws were forgotten and the light was angled like a compliment.
Canals in Singapore are engineered honesty. They tell you where rain wanted to go before apartments disagreed. I grew up near one in another town and thought they smelled the same everywhere. They almost do — concrete, mud, distant exhaust — but Clementi's version has a hawker smell on weekends when wind carries frying oil across the water.
An auntie power-walked past me wearing headphones that leaked old Cantopop. She lapped me twice. On the second pass she smiled as if we had an arrangement. Maybe we did: both of us using the same cheap therapy.
I sat on a bench that faced the path instead of the water. Benches are designed for rest but I use them for thinking sideways. What if the hardware shop had been open? I would have fixed the loose cabinet hinge and never seen the heron adjust its wings without taking off. Small closures redirect whole afternoons.
Near the U-turn marker a maintenance crew had clipped shrubs. Cuttings lay in piles that would become mulch or smoke depending on budget. One worker drank from a plastic bag of iced lime tied with a rubber band — old school, still superior to bottles.
Home approached through the back of the estate, where loading bays smell of cardboard and durian on the wrong day. I climbed the stairs because the lift was under maintenance again. Floor five. Door unlocked. Cabinet hinge still loose. Screws still absent. The detour changed nothing practical and everything tonal.
I wrote this that night with fan on high and socks still damp at the toes. The heron may have been a different bird entirely. I accept that. Memory edits for contrast. The walk remains true enough to keep.
Back at the flat I tried the cabinet hinge with a coin instead of a screwdriver. It worked poorly and loudly. Some problems insist on proper tools. I added screws to next week's list and felt the small satisfaction of deferred competence — not fixed, but named.
Later, rain arrived without asking and made the canal audio louder through the window. I could not see the heron from here. I could hear traffic on Commonwealth like distant surf. Clementi at night is mostly fans and footsteps; I typed until both sounds blended into background I no longer noticed.
The path between bridges two and three.