linger
Once upon a
time, there was a shop in Garema Arcade called Felt.
Its window today is shrouded in brown paper. Nothing of the store remains, only
concrete flooring, bare walls, paint peeling, small ceiling spotlights, and a single dangling power socket.
A dust-covered Hitachi remote control and dead fly rest behind the window: a final display.
I only know Felt existed because Mum found it on a visit. I tried on a couple of things once but never came back. That’s all I remember of Felt and so, I asked my friends for their stories.
No one knows when Felt closed but they remember dropping by with friends, on breaks from school or working in the cafés nearby. They remember persuading their BFF to buy matching shiny track jackets—one red, one black—and posing for cheesy selfies. They remember their boyfriend pointing at a funky spacesuit, “Why don’t you ever wear anything cool like this?” They remember the people.
In the process of writing this piece, I visited the arcade twice. The first ti…
Its window today is shrouded in brown paper. Nothing of the store remains, only
concrete flooring, bare walls, paint peeling, small ceiling spotlights, and a single dangling power socket.
A dust-covered Hitachi remote control and dead fly rest behind the window: a final display.
I only know Felt existed because Mum found it on a visit. I tried on a couple of things once but never came back. That’s all I remember of Felt and so, I asked my friends for their stories.
No one knows when Felt closed but they remember dropping by with friends, on breaks from school or working in the cafés nearby. They remember persuading their BFF to buy matching shiny track jackets—one red, one black—and posing for cheesy selfies. They remember their boyfriend pointing at a funky spacesuit, “Why don’t you ever wear anything cool like this?” They remember the people.
In the process of writing this piece, I visited the arcade twice. The first ti…
