I was walking past a construction site yesterday, when I smelled paint. The lingering sweet metal smell of paint.

The worries of the day thinned and layers of the years cracked.

I sat on a sheet of yesterday's edition of Today, watching a splotchy old man paint the front door of my new home. Located at Bukit Batok. Boutique Buttock. Book It But Talk. My dad said I had to memorise it. Bukit Batok Street Twenty-Five. "Don't touch, don't touch, WET PAINT" the splotchy man coughed out. So, I did what any 5 year old would do and touched it the first chance I got, leaving my first mark on my first home. It left a mark on me too. My fingers smelled like paint. The lingering sweet metal smell of paint.

I left many other marks in that home. I drew stickmen on the walls to give me company, stuck an array of my weapon of choice (origami shirukens) next to my bed, (you know in case the aliens came at night), and glued fluorescent plastic stars to the ceiling.

When I got back from school, I would yell out what Amma was cooking for lunch from the door where I could smell it. I would stare blankly at my grandpa's jokes instead of him staring blankly at me. I would fight ugly fights with my sister (we were so close). I would watch TV hanging upside down from the IKEA Poäng armchair. On Friday movie nights, I would always be the first one asleep on the stacks of bedsheets we laid on the living room floor. I would plant onions and potatoes in a pot next to our evergreen Tulsi, and I would watch as they rotted away from the amount of care I gave them.

Over the years, the house filled up with things, with furniture, with plants, with photos, with souvenirs and eventually it was too much to bear.

Before we sold it, we had to make our house look new. So we meticulously painted over every blemish, suffocated every stickman, scraped off every star. I wasn't there when my parents handed the keys over to the new owners of my home. I was too excited to go somewhere new.

It's been many years, and I imagine by now my childhood has been lived over, painted over, demolished and built over. I pass by the block now and then. No one I know lives there anymore. No one knows I lived there anymore.

The maroon buildings are now painted blue.

My memory is fading like old paint, and I think I don't remember what it feels like to be home anymore.