The ground lay stark under the moonlight. The target boards in the distance were incongruously radiant, hovering like little phalanxes of fireflies. I inhaled. With the handguard propped up by a sandbag and my person stretched prone upon the concrete, I peered through the scope, fixed the cross hairs on the illuminated torso and released a round into the night.
\n__________<\/p>\n
Turnover that morning was high,
\nand the understudies arrived just in time
\nto detonate the fourth wall, the fifth column,
\nthirty, sixty, a hundred times over,
\nlike sandbox trees in fertile soil.
\nI had for my debut the
\nmustard seeds from home, from
\nthe Mother,
\nnow withering under the applause
\nand the flashing lights, lights.
\nWas this the cue for the trapdoor? One thousand,
\ncrouch down in a foetal position; two thousand,
\nlace your fingers over the nape of your neck;
\nthree thousand, four thousand, five \u2013 cut to black.<\/p>\n
A duvet now hangs over the proscenium,
\nthe last pantheon of forgotten protagonists.
\nBut I like to think they\u2019re still close,
\nswearing, smoking, standing sentinel.
\n__________<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s all for today, folks. Please remember to read chapters three and four for next week\u2019s lecture.\u201d<\/p>\n
The curtain rises.
\n__________<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re leaving.\u201d
\n\u201cYes.\u201d
\n\u201cBecause it\u2019s time.\u201d
\n\u201cYes.\u201d
\n\u201cBecause it\u2019s best.\u201d
\n\u201cYes.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd you\u2019re sure about this.\u201d
\n\u201cPositive.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd you\u2019ll be happy.\u201d
\n\u201cI hope so. I don\u2019t know.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd you\u2019ll call.\u201d
\n\u201cWell, I know you will. Every year.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Header photo by Ryan Quek<\/em><\/p>\n —<\/p>\n About the Author<\/em><\/p>\n Jonathan is a freshman from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He remains undecided as to his major, though he is interested in literature, politics, language, time and memory. Some of his favourite authors include Dickens, Orwell, Ishiguro and Kundera. You probably haven\u2019t seen him before: he\u2019s usually firmly ensconced in his room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes, the past cannot be forgotten and memory triggers come from unexpected places. Today on Treehouse, Jonathan writes about leaving the military and starting school, and how his experiences in school trigger times in the military.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":2636,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","publication_type-reflection","theme-arts","theme-society","scope-others","flavour-profound"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4177"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4181,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4177\/revisions\/4181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tembusu3.nus.edu.sg\/treehouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}