story

Be That Stranger

I was waiting outside a small clinic one afternoon, seated on one of those plastic chairs that never quite support your back. People came and went. A nurse called out names. Someone dropped a file. A child tugged at his mother’s sleeve. It was ordinary in every possible way.

And yet, in that quiet in-between space, I noticed how invisible we all were to one another.

We sat side by side, close enough to hear each other breathe, yet wrapped in our own private worlds. Phones in hand. Eyes lowered. Each carrying something unspoken. Worry. Fatigue. Hope. A long day ahead.

Strangers, all of us.

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Desert Wind Songs

✏️ Day 29 – Desert Wind Songs
 (UAE)

My pencil rolled across the page like a dune.
Golden curves, soft and endless.
Then—vroom!—a streak of silver sliced through.
A race car!
Right in the middle of my desert!

The pencil laughed,
saying Abu Dhabi loves to surprise.
One moment you’re counting grains of sand,
the next you’re counting laps at Yas Marina.

I drew the city’s edge—
glass towers rising like mirages,
a falcon gliding overhead,
its wings tracing the shape of speed.

Then came a secret:
there’s a hotel here where rooms
overlook the Formula 1 track—
and when cars race by,
the windows tremble with joy.

I signed my name quickly,
half afraid my pencil might take off too.
The wind outside hummed low,
and for once,
it sounded like an engine dreaming.

✨ If your pencil could race the wind, where would it stop to rest?
2

Golden Quiet

✏️ Day 28 – Golden Quiet
 (Brunei, Bandar Seri Begawan)

My pencil woke up whispering today—
soft, respectful, like it had entered a palace.
The page glowed even before I touched it.

It began to sketch domes,
golden and round like morning suns.
Then came the water,
reflecting the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque,
so perfectly that I almost didn’t know
which was the drawing and which the dream.

The pencil paused to tell me a secret:
this mosque stands partly on a lagoon,
its bridge made of marble so white
that even clouds blush beside it.

I shaded a few ripples below,
and the reflection smiled back at me.
When I signed my name,
the pencil shimmered faintly—
as if it too had learned how to bow in light.

✨ If your pencil met its reflection, what truth would it draw first?
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