"where have the mynahs fled / without hawker scraps?" (Jerome Lim, some years later)

An old one once told me that they were made black with yellow beaks to confuse the eye of the sun, which (in its blindness) mistake their feathers for shadows and (in its vanity) mistake their beaks for its own glow. I have also heard that they are skilled imitators, remaining only in the form we see them because their pride compels them to take no other. In this we can tell that they are better storytellers than liars, but who can blame them? They're the ones who stepped forward to take the stage. They've never needed permits to turn open trees into open mikes, or car parks into car washes, or picnics into pandemics. They've even begun to take our jobs: once, I saw them strip a tray clean before the cleaning uncle could empty it into a bin. So I wouldn't worry a thing about the place once we're gone. They'll clean it up quite nicely, our sun-fearing city. Already they fight moving cars for crushed fruit; I imagine a future where their song strips leaves from planterbox trees and rends brick and concrete to sand. I imagine the song that rises above tarmac and ERP gantries, above the rising sea levels. That writes our next chapter unhungry, uncontestable and as true as the whites of their eyes.