What we saw when the lion didn’t come
Singapore
2025, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
chapter one: mirage
they say Sang Nila Utama saw a lion.
i say it was the heat—
a gold-skinned hallucination
risen from the saltmouth of the sea.
the sky shimmered like oil on paper,
and something, something looked back.
wet like a wound / sky scabbing over
dripping asphalt in slow violence
fish float belly-up in the Marina.
he dropped the crown as if gold had grown too hot to hold.
i think i saw a lion too, once—
on a tourist mug,
mane painted in sunset lacquer, mouth fixed mid-howl,
barcode peeling like sunburn.
chapter two: kiln
was the lion ever here?
or did we see the glare of the sun and call it a beast?
Singapura1 is a kiln with no potter.
clouds hang heavy, refusing to open.
my bones have forgotten the memory of monsoon.
even the rain arrives as steam,
like soup boiled dry.
i walk Orchard2 at noon,
watch glass gleam like unsheathed blades.
my pulse hammers in the throat of a fevered thermometer,
and i blink sweat from my lashes like a soldier refusing surrender.
we built a city on myth and mirage,
handed it a flag,
gave the sun a home and let it rot here.
now we write elegies in condensation
on train windows.
our air holds grief like incense—
a suffocating thickness disguised as humidity.
chapter three: sphinx
if you look closely,
the Merlion3 is crying.
chlorinated tears
for a future we feed to fire,
like hell notes4 to starving furnaces.
at the harbor,
tourists snap photos of the skyline
under the shield of umbrellas.
what a riddle,
this lesser brother of the Sphinx—
how its sister’s lips are sealed with knowing,
and it, sunstruck, caught the Medusa-glare at high noon,
its death so swift it forgot to close its mouth.
now its jaws hang open,
chalk-blind eyes fixed on the sky,
cursed to stare into the eye of the sun
for all eternity.
1 Singapore’s old name. It is in Malay as that is the national language.
2 Orchard Road is a major shopping and commercial district in Singapore, known for its luxury, lavishness and extremely high temperatures in the afternoon.
3 The Merlion is a national symbol of Singapore with the head of a lion and the body of a fish, representing the legend of Sang Nila Utama who, upon landing on the island, is said to have seen a lion and named the place Singapura, or “Lion City.”
4 Hell notes are joss paper resembling currency, traditionally burned in Chinese funerals and ancestral rites as offerings to deceased loved ones, symbolically providing them with money to use in the afterlife. Despite the name, “hell” refers to the underworld rather than a place of punishment, and the practice reflects filial piety and the desire to care for ancestors beyond death.
Reflection
Reflection
The idea for my poem began with the legend of Prince Sang Nila Utama, who, upon landing on the island, claimed to see a lion and named it Singapura (Lion City in Malay). That lion became a cornerstone of national myth, but many have since questioned whether it was truly there, given that lions have never roamed Singapore. I found myself asking the same question one day while staring up at the Merlion, squinting in the sharp heat of a city that seems to grow hotter every year. This question sparked the poem. I was drawn to the tension between legend and climate reality, and to the Merlion as a symbol—silent, dignified, yet somehow straining under the weight of our burning planet. I reimagined it as a figure caught in heatstroke, cursed to face the sun forever, much like our city caught in its own slow burn. Living in an urban city-state, my connection to the environment is shaped by this “Concrete Jungle” and the strange grief of watching familiar places change under climate pressure. Being outside often feels like a reminder of both what we’ve built and what we’re losing. Through poetry, I try to make sense of that dissonance, and offer a way of seeing that remembers the land beneath the myth.