Childhood for me was a dreamy cloud of chasing sunlight and blowing bubbles that pop once they touched the chalk-colored-streets. Until one day, I made my sister cry, and my mother grounded me in my room where there was nothing to occupy my ever-fleeting mind but pencil and paper. Scoffing, I grabbed the pencil and wrote in blotched letters how angry I was, and suddenly, my boiling bubble of rage died and translated into these graphite shapes. Somehow, they left the realm of emotions and become physical. It was magic - a wand, teleporting my web of neurons to the pencil tip, where I’d eternalize my memories so that I’d play them like a movie in my mind. Or I’d write letters to my father to swiftly manifest by his side. Or I’d write novels about my home-country friends so they’d appear on my empty lunch table.

Whatever it was, the day my mother handed me a pencil was a gift every dreamer needs. A gift that makes every human soul infinite to the past, present and future of this untimely universe. For it was the day I learnt that humans were never meant to exist solely in flesh and blood.