I keep a small Muji notebook in the back pocket of whichever pair of trousers I am wearing. Its purpose is to record sentences I overhear on the MRT. I have been doing this since December 2024. There are two rules. First, I do not identify the speakers, even in my head. Second, I only write down sentences that survive the walk home — sentences that I can still recall, unaltered, at the end of the journey.

These are twelve of them, in the order I collected them. They are Singapore, in the small, un-photographed sense that the guidebooks do not manage.

1.

"He told her he was going to Bangkok for a boys' trip. She checked his Grab history. There are no boys."

Between Serangoon and Kovan. A Wednesday. Two women in their thirties. Neither of them was laughing.

2.

"You know what I miss? The old cinema at the Cathay building. Not because it was good. Because the seats had ashtrays and my father used them."

Little India, southbound, 6:47 pm. Older gentleman, alone, speaking to a younger man who might have been his son.

3.

"He said, 'Mum, why do you cry at Chinese New Year?' And I did not have the answer prepared."

Farrer Park, northbound. A woman on the phone.

4.

"I don't know what she wants from me. I bought her the necklace. I picked up her parents. I even watched the second Frozen. Twice."

5.

"The dog knows the sound of my keys. He does not know the sound of my husband's. This is not a metaphor."

6.

"They call it Sengkang because 'kang' is 'harbour' in Cantonese. There used to be a river. There is not anymore. But the name stayed."

A grandmother, teaching her grandson, between Buangkok and Sengkang. He was six.

7.

"You cannot go back to Malaysia now. Your mother has been dead for eleven years. What you want, they cannot give you."

An older woman, speaking to another older woman, holding her hand. Between Boon Keng and Farrer Park.

"A city is made of the things its people say out loud on the way to somewhere else."

8.

"I told the interviewer I was fluent in Mandarin. I am not fluent in Mandarin. The job started on Monday. I have been in Chinatown for three hours studying flashcards."

9.

"Every Sunday my father calls me and asks about the weather. It is Singapore. The weather has been the same for forty years. This is not what he is asking."

10.

"My mother said if we do not get married by December, my uncle will stop paying for the wedding. Is this romantic? No. But it is Chinese New Year."

11.

"I bought this notebook because I keep hearing sentences on the MRT."

A man on the phone, approximately my age, at Dhoby Ghaut. I did not write his sentence down until I was already at Little India. I think about this often.

12.

"You know what? I forgive him. Not because he asked. Because I am tired of carrying it."

The last sentence I wrote down before the notebook was full. A young woman, no older than twenty-five, on the phone. Northbound. Late evening.

A note on this exercise

I am aware that quietly writing down sentences from strangers is, technically, eavesdropping. I have thought about this a lot. My defence is that these sentences were spoken in a shared public carriage at conversational volume, and that I have removed every trace of the speaker's identity. Nobody is quoted here who could be recognised, not even by themselves.

What I have kept is the sentence. The specific words, and the specific weight of the silence that followed. That is the thing I did not want to lose. Not because it belongs to me. Because it does not belong to anyone in particular, and yet it belongs to everyone who lives here.

The MRT, on a good day, is the best-lit confessional in Singapore. It has a schedule. It has fluorescent lighting. It has a small chime every time the doors open. And every single sentence in it will be gone by tomorrow, unless one of us writes it down.