20 May 2026 · canal park connector

Canal Path, After the Rain

I left Bukit Merah View later than I meant to, after the second shower had already passed and the estate was holding its breath in that lull between two showers. The path down to the canal park connector was slick with fallen leaves, and my shoes made a soft sticking sound on the concrete where the water had not yet drained. I walked without earphones because the air after rain has its own soundtrack — distant traffic, a bicycle bell somewhere behind the blocks, the canal itself moving quietly under the bridge.

Halfway along the connector I stopped because a heron was standing in the shallows with the stillness of something that had nowhere else to be. I had seen herons here before, but never one that held its pose while I counted to thirty. Its reflection wavered when a leaf touched the surface, then steadied again. A runner passed on the far side and the bird did not flinch. I felt briefly rude for watching, as if I had interrupted a private appointment with the water.

The path was empty except for the heron and me

The railing along the bend was still wet, and when I rested my hand on it the metal held the cool of the afternoon. I wiped my palm on my skirt and kept walking. The canal smelled like earth and something green I could not name — not unpleasant, just specific to this hour, when the sun was low enough to flatten the colours along the bank. Cyclists came and went in pairs. An uncle walked a small dog that sniffed every puddle as if each one contained news.

I thought about how this route had become my default when I needed to walk off a day that had stayed too loud indoors. From my end of the road to the connector and back takes roughly forty minutes if I do not stop, and I almost always stopped. There is a bench near the railing where someone has carved initials into the wood, and I have never read them closely because it felt like eavesdropping on a conversation that ended years ago.

The railing held the afternoon's cool

On the way home the streetlights began to come on in sequence, not all at once but in a staggered line that followed me up the slope towards the blocks. I watched them switch — one, then two, then the row above the carpark — and the estate changed from grey to amber in stages. A woman on the opposite path carried marketing flyers in a plastic sleeve; she nodded and I nodded back. The heron was gone when I looked over my shoulder. The water looked ordinary again, which is also a kind of ending.

By the time I reached my lift lobby my shoes had dried at the edges and the sky had turned the colour of old paper. I wrote a few lines in my notebook on the ride up, mostly about the railing and the light, because the heron felt too still to capture in words without making it sentimental. Some things are better left as a picture in the head. I made tea when I got in and left the window open a finger's width to let the damp air through.

I have walked that path many evenings since, and the sequence of streetlights still catches me — the way the estate lights itself in order, as if someone somewhere is paying attention to the hour. The canal after rain remains my favourite version of the neighbourhood: quieter, softer at the edges, with room to notice a bird that refuses to move until it is ready. I am not a serious walker. I am just someone who needed a route that did not ask anything of me except to keep putting one foot in front of the other until the lights came on and home felt close enough to reach.