.... and I Will Be Flying On a Broomstick

People look at you and see something that needs to be fixed. You are a broken radio, never in tune with the emotional wavelengths of others. You swing like a pendulum between two states of being - incomprehensible static and awkward silence. Some nights, you think of dismantling your own heart under the moonlight. You want to find out what is broken just so that you might have an answer to questions that are left unspoken. “Don’t you feel anything?” “Why are you like this?” “Do you even have a heart?” Sometimes you just want to fit in. You are sick of standing at the sidelines, watching other people cry. You imagine their hearts full of emotion, spilling out into the world and making a statement, “Look at us, we are human”. To have the courage to be vulnerable and to be able to find comfort in other people who share your feelings. If their tears don’t drown you, you think your jealousy might. Once or twice, you try to fake it. You pinch yourself hard enough to bruise. You t

You can play a game of “Guess Which Side of the Doors Will Open” before the train’s PA system announces the answer. You can count the stitches on salary men and women’s business suits during the morning rush hour. You can dance your own version of the Macarena when you forget where you put your tickets or IC card. You can listen to announcements on the train. On rare occasions, you might hear the train drivers stumbling across their words or saying the name of a station wrong. You can expect profuse apologies immediately afterwards. You can marvel at a world turned pink when it’s sakura season. As the train stops at different stations, you can look out for signs of seasonal change in the menus of udon shops on the platforms. You can close your eyes and eavesdrop on other people’s conversations if your Japanese is good enough. If not, it’s more exciting because you can try to catch familiar words and construct context and meaning out of guesswork. You can throw disapproving look