singapore writers' festival 2005 is upon us! well, soon anyway. ok i won't beat around the bush- i entered the 100-word epic writing contest on impulse, on the last day of submission. the grand prize is to have your entry printed on zocards and distributed around singapore. how cool is that?! it's based on online votes, and each person can only vote once. i've (almost) gone through all 18 (!) pages worth of entries, and here are the ones i think are good. can't remember which pages they're on though.
1. I want a child who will wrap his small arms halfway around my waist, rest his chin on my rib and question me about the world. His mother will silence me with a touch and continue feeding him white lies and mashed carrots.
I will let him ride on my shoulders so that he can see further, see what I couldn't. He will be my crown, I will be his elephant. My wife will be a princess waiting for rescue. He might even forbid her from eating apples.
He will outgrow us eventually.
I did, but I never forgot.
2. It was how he said...no, 'pronounced' the idea of Dublin, and separate luggage, while she fumbled in her handbag for his Hershey's Kisses.
She chewed the nub of chocolate and remembered bandaging a sheepish young student's sprained ankle and righting his BMX. And the day later, when he'd rang her doorbell in a hastily pressed suit, cradling a small box of chocolates.
There had been the shy way he had touched her lips with the marzipan; the moment she knew she was in love.
She gazed at the man in the Arrow shirt and wondered where the boy had gone.
3. "You always walk too fast" she said with a tinge of hurt as she pulled his hand backwards to slow him down. However he felt the strong urge to go on, to merge with the flowing crowd; a relentless wave across an ocean of heads, relentless in searching for a goal or destination to find something.
He turned to look at her, noticing nothing else, not even her physical attractiveness but it was the look in her eye that made him stop; a pleading look to come back. They paused and their foreheads met as they melted into the sea.
4. I watch as he reads the paper, phone in one hand, his coffee, now cold, in the other. His eyes scan the papers, his ears listening to the news on TV. Minutes later, he is at the door, dressed in another one of his Armani suits, briefcase in his right hand, his left around my waist. He kisses my cheek. "Dinner? I'm cooking -" I begin.
"Sorry, late meeting."
"Maybe tomorrow?"
"Maybe."
Before I can say anything, he is in his car, speeding towards the skyscrapers on the horizon. Yet another day I lose my love to this urban city.
5. I am drunk.
I realize this as I hitch one leg up on the counter, intending on performing a bartop striptease, and also that if I bent over, my capris would spilt. At the seams. On my ass. Still, I never let small inconveniences stop me. What doesn't kill you.. is cool. Or something like that. Anyway, my friends aren't trying to stop me. One's even got her phone camera trained on my every move. Friends like this rock. As I attempt a high-kick and go flying, I also realize that I'm going to have such a hangover in the morning.
6. We walk, side by side, on pavements built for two. We walk, one behind the other, where the concrete thins. We walk, drifting apart where crowds thicken and bustle, floating back to each other as the masses ebb. We walk, side by side, once again. And we walk, closer, touching so ever slightly. We walk, crossing roads of snarling metal, darting in-between growling cars, defying lights of glowing red. We walk, up staircases, over bridges, on slopes, along quiet alleys, slipping into lands of the lost. And we walk, finding faith, finally, in each other’s hands.
7. Your boyfriend writing "Your my true love" on a free postcard. That is as tender as it gets. Your first kiss interrupted by children yelling "mummy what are they doing?" on the MRT. That is as romantic as it gets. Your elegant, designer dinner-table candles blown out again and again by your baby's excited huffing. That is as everlasting as it gets. Your husband finding out the neighbours can hear you through the apartment walls. That is as carnal as it gets. Your greatest love marrying you in a civil servant's office.
This is as passionate as it gets.
and finally, my entry. it's on pg 16, by the way =)
It's been twenty-eight minutes and oh, 15 seconds. I'm madly in love with his eyelashes, his slumped shoulders, his tousled hair. Everyone knows you don't just go up and kiss someone you've been staring at for the past 28 minutes and 25 seconds.
29:56 So distractingly adorable.
32:49 I'll only live once. No one's ever died from embarrassment right? ... Right?
A girl rushes up to a boy, hastily presses a muffin into his hands. "I love you," she mouths, and kisses him on the lips for emphasis. The crowds weave around them, the better to protect innocent, sweet love.
but i believe in democracy and meritocracy and all the other stuff that rhyme too. so go on, contribute a little time to singapore's budding writers and plough through those things. and if you do happen to like mine, yay! if not.. well i can always write directly onto a blank zocard. in permanent ink.