So I was reading.

I was in a current of words, which brushed against me, I could almost feel the friction on my skin, the slight resistance, stronger than wind, weaker than warm sea water, somewhere in between. I didn't always understand what the words meant, although I understood what the words meant. It's like listening and hearing. Sometimes you hear, but you don't listen. Or was it the other way around?

When there was comprehension, I was carried in a whirlwind of emotions the words afforded me, I saw what he wanted me to see, I was in his body, I became one with him. I cried, I laughed, I heard his voice accompanying the current of words. Sometimes it was heavy, like thunder - not loud, startling crackles, but slow, uneasy rumbles in the distance. Sometimes it was light, like tinkles of bells, like children laughing, and I was happy.

Sometimes I lost track of the words, they were rushing at me in torrents, so I contented myself with skipping through the pages like bouncing on rocks in a stream, absently looking at the meaning trickling in between the words, consciously taking care not to pay too much attention, in case I got ahead of myself and discovered too much of what was in store. It was like being a fortune teller. Sometimes I glimpsed good parts coming up, at times bad. When I saw bad parts I would read extremely slowly, trying to prolong the inevitable downfall, while hoping endlessly that I had misread the crystal ball and it would be good after all.

Never, never would I skip to the end. That would be sacrilege. It would render The Book meaningless, everything from the page that I'd stopped halfway till the last page might as well be blank because they didn't matter anymore. The end had happened in spite of all the expanse of pages in the blank. And I love The Book, I never want to finish it. I love how it makes me feel, parts of my soul that I had forgotten that I had. I want to prolong this open window of looking at precious little corners with some childhood left in it.

Like a lingering scent that you want to smell for ever and ever although you know you have to stop breathing in at some point or your lungs would burst, and then the scent would be lost. For a while you might remember how it smelt like, how beautiful it was, till it fades away, even in your memory, and there is only one line of words left in your head - "It was a beautiful smell, a little like cinnamon, a little like freshly laundered bedsheets dried by the sun, a little like him." Then even that line would shrink, slowly becoming "I smelt a smell. It was good." to "Singapore sucks, I hate my life."

Then and there the window would be closed, and you have to wait till another time when you get a whiff again, and remember how beautiful it was, how lovely your soul can actually be, and the amazing things you could do if you held on to this moment and continued to dream like how you did, before the world came into the picture and messed you up.