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PLAYTHING

PLAYTHING

provides a grim realist adult reinterpretation on 15 common children toys. 

PLAYTHING explores and portrays these children toys through written musings and illustration, exploring major themes where Society is the master while the reader serves as Society's PLAYTHING.

BATTLESHIP

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Some of your ships in life will sink.

They'll range in size, from the forgotten raft to the grand, aching loss of your own Titanic.

We all carry vessels on the open sea of living. Each ship,  a relationship, a dream, a version of yourself.

Some float. Some are hit.
Some vanish beneath the waves before you ever knew they were leaking.

But the game, this life, doesn’t end without loss. It can’t.
So you ask: how many passengers did I lose with that last sunken ship?

And does that wreckage live on in the deep as memory, as myth, or as something I’ve quietly learned to carry?

You can still be a winner, whatever that means, but no one escapes without taking fire.

To have all your ships go untouched? That’s nearly impossible. Almost suspicious. This sea demands something.

And eventually, the board is cleared. Game over.

But until then, you play.
You rebuild.

 

You float what you can.

WORK-IN
PROGRESS

WOODEN NUMBERS

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“There are 5 cats.”
Once, numbers were simple. Wooden, painted, bright with intention. They existed to help me understand the world: counting pets, sharing snacks, adding joy.
1 + 1 = a friend.
2 = a pair of shoes.
3 = how many times I went down the slide.

Numbers were tools for learning, not yet for measuring worth. “There will be a deduction of 5,162.49.”
Now, numbers arrive with weight.

They no longer teach, they take. They tally losses. They define survival rates.

They whisper timelines: years left, debts owed, hours worked, money lost to a choice I thought was smart.

Red, once the vibrant colour of apples, fire trucks, and the number 1 from my wooden toy set is now the hue of overdraft notices, tax forms, and medical charts.

Numbers, once playful,
now loom.

They quantify pain, monetize risk, assign value to things that used to just be.

Gone is the gentle wonder of "how many cats?"

Now, “how much time?”
“How much is left?”
“How much did I lose?”
The rainbow of childhood counting has dulled.
The colours still exist, but they burn differently. Especially red. Red now tastes like loss.

STICKERS

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How I Became a Sticker Album:
From collector to the collected
When I was young, I owned a sticker album.

Each page,  a shrine of cartoon characters, sparkly stars, and holographic graphics.

Cuteness was currency, and I was rich in glitter.

Give it two decades, or less, and I’m no longer the one flipping through pages.

I am the album now.
No longer curating.
Just carrying.

A patchwork of labels stuck on me by others’ hands:
“Success.”“Queer.”“Cool, but…”
I didn’t ask for these stickers.

Some I didn’t even know I wore.

They appear silently, pressed onto skin akin to fragile little judgments.
Even fruits get stickers, a code, an origin, a category.
Not all apples taste the same, but they’re housed within the same plastic tray.
Maybe stickers are decorative, sure..
but what if we’re just ornaments lined up in the world’s living room?
Neatly arranged. Labeled. Categorised for convenience.

And so I ask:
Am I proud of the album I’ve become?

Or do I long to peel the labels off, page by page,
until I find the child again? Choosing, not carrying.

Back then, stickers were about joy, selection, play.
The thrill of peeling and placing.
My choice, my story.

But a few years later, stickers began to shift. They came with conditions. A gold star for good behaviour. A "Well done!" for fitting the mold.

In due time, its absence became its own kind of label.

I was lucky, maybe, spared the full weight of those expectations.But only for a while.

BEAD MAZE

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I told her, “Let’s leave it to fate, to whatever the universe proposes.”
But then came a silence, echoing louder than speech:
Aren’t you part of the universe too?
 

The narrative could have gone either way.
It always can. I suppose it depends on who’s saying it—and who’s listening.

Am I the fate-weaver, or
simply, woven?
Am I performing Clotho’s task in my own small way,
threading choices that feel like chance?

If only her sisters were here
Lachesis to measure, Atropos to cut, to tell me who I am in this looping maze.

Because that’s what it feels like: a bead maze.

Curved wires, fixed paths.

The bead slides, but it was always going where it was designed to go.

Is this a dialogue? Or a monologue deep in the grey enclaves of my mind?

However grey this conversation may be, one truth remains:
Fates are only ever half-sewn.

As romantic as destiny sounds, 
there’s always a thread left dangling,

waiting for someone
to decide whether to pull or let go.

SNAKE & LADDERS

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If snakes were herbivores one day,
perhaps their legacy of fear, could be softened.
But even then, time would be needed to unlearn the instinct to recoil.

I’m haunted not by the sight of them, but by the hiss I imagine, the threat I sense, before it ever strikes. In stillness, they are beautiful, serpentine sculptures, aesthetic marvels. But beauty does not equal trust.

It’s not their form I fear, it’s their nature. Quick to lunge, quick to unmake progress. An animal, after all, acts on survival, no different from humans.

And at the first sound, I retreat, I sequester.

Because one wrong move, one bite, can take me back to square one. A ladder, though, is a quiet, reliable friend. It doesn’t hiss. It doesn't strike. It appears, steadies, and invites you upward. No tricks, just height.

RING STACKER

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Tall orders.
For someone neither short nor tall, just average, life stacks its demands,  some chosen, many inherited from a world that expects, betroths, and binds.

They stack, multiply, growing heavier with time, a constricting anaconda, coiling tighter with each stage, demanding breath, space, and freedom.

And just when one grip loosens, another tightens.

An endless cycle of give and take, a dance with self and society.

To the architects of these tall orders those voices that shaped "normal," the expectations woven into the everyday could you offer a hand?

To ease the cuffs, to lighten the load pressing down on weary shoulders?
These rings aren’t solitary.

Each responsibility a ring placed carefully, layer upon layer, around their neck.

A noose of flesh and duty, tightening with every added weight, pulling them toward a slow suffocation some grips they choose, others forced upon them by unseen hands.

SHAPE SORTING CUBE

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There’s that known phrase: fit into the mold.
 

They bend and flex, with every coming trend, opening for arrivals, closing on departures.

Are we meant to reshape ourselves, to morph and contort just to pass through?

Never truer than in a world of cuboids, with only rare cracks where the unexpected slips through. At first glance, stiff and unyielding.

Yet sometimes, just sometimes, those gates shift shape.

Or are we trapped, imprisoned in this cuboid cage, waiting to find the shape that finally sets us free? If you’re happy and you know it, come say hi.

ROLY POLY

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If by design, I am built to be hit, flicked, pushed, knocked again and again…

Why is the Top, allowed to spin, burn out, and finally rest... But me?

I'm expected to endure. To never stay down. To never stop returning to center.

Am I supposed to keep bouncing back? Always upright, always smiling?

Isn’t one allowed to falter, especially when survival demands it?

What makes my stillness, so presupposed?
What makes my pause, a failure?

GEDULDSPIELE

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Everyone’s a hero, in their own weird little epic. Battles, glitches, loop-arcs. No one's background in their own life.

Society’s just one oversized storybook Thick, with overlapping narratives, written in parallel

Some lives are solo puzzles, some in two-player modes. Some people loop in shared space, learning to coexist. In the same narrative room.

Shelves and shelves of human Geduldspiele, those patience puzzles…

What if you could play someone else’s part in their story?

Could you wear their skin like a costume or code? Could you feel the heat of their choices or walk their maze?

If empathy is the controller, would it be enough?

You twist and tilt, until something clicks. Not solved, but seen. Not escaped, but felt.

TOP

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Pinched at the tip, picked with thirst, a hunger for the Top.
They say it would suit me, to be renamed, reframed, to something more “fitting” for my stance.

Not out of reverence, but “accuracy,”
they say. But what is this, if not a test of endurance?

To be the last one standing is not triumph, it’s exhaustion dressed in silence. A top does not (top)ple, they insist.

But I never wanted to be “on top.” I never asked to be the survivor.

I stay upright, only by spinning in circles. Balance as burden. Motion as survival.

The idol. The fixed point in a storm. Truth is, me and “Top”, in any sense of the word, were never meant to meet.

One day, the final spin ends. The circle breaks. And finally, I fall.

Not in defeat, but in peace.
Laid to rest.
Not toppled, but released.

PULL-ALONG TOY

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A trophy in atrophy, once gleaming, now dulled. Things were different, years ago. But time moves forward. Without asking, and the walkway back is steep, narrow, and barely lit.

Today, I follow - willing or worn down, led by the nose.

Am I just cargo on someone else’s pursuit? They say dogs like to run, but I’ve grown loyal, to the arms of my captor.

Learned to tell the tale that walking in his footsteps was wisdom. Learned to call this leash a life.

I’ve become dependent on the one who pulls the string, drives the pace, dictates the path

I am no longer myself, just an extension of him. A shadow. A plastic creature, rolling where I’m told.

And yet, I wonder. If the string were ever severed,how would I fare? Would I stumble, or sprint?

They call me bitch and still say I’m man’s best friend. But I’m not a pet. I’m not a trophy. I am human. I am not meant for atrophy.

And gods, I would love to run my own way, again.

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