Keeping Up Appearances

"You are a strong woman," Adik tells me but I don't answer, staring off into the distance instead tracking the jet planes crossing the night sky.

I can bear it. That is all. I don't have the will to fight.

I bear the weight of unborn babies, loves forever banished to a waking fog of loss, friends lost without reason, myself jettisoned to unforgivable moments that know shame only in the shadows of my mind and not the light of day. She knows nothing about any of this, only that I smile, when I'm angry, or sad, just a little bit wider than when I'm happy.

It helps that I drink. It helps that I only cry when I'm alone. It helps that I see what is, as it is, and don't ask for more. It helps to forget, but it leaves this false impression. That I am a strong woman.

Still there are moments of grace, stolen from unsuspecting strangers and selfishly curated in a gallery of half truths.

There is, after all, the Buddhist temple, falling to ruin on top of a hill in an abandoned Vietnamese refugee camp.

There is the ramshackle Catholic church with geckos scurrying through the epiphany scenes painted on the walls. There are the monyet pleading to be fed, and a threatening tide coming in like a carefully nurtured revenge unleashed on a generation who cannot recollect or trace a cause.

There is a swing, wide enough for two, though I sit alone kicking up sand, pumping higher and higher trying to touch the sky before I jump into the ocean of all the gods' tears.

There are my Christian friends who share their tree and their food and their carols and prayers to a god I try to remember as my own but who will never show his face to me again.

He is, after all, more vengeful than the tides and I will not ask  his forgiveness. Besides, there is no snow here, so there is no need for the warmth of caring. It's every man for himself, a rehearsal for a shipwreck still in the planning stages.

Only I  know I am not strong, because I will never speak out loud how badly I want to be able to say instead that there is a fairy tale ending, salvation, if only we have patience and a little faith. Instead I say, "It's a man's world, Adik, take what you can when it comes your way, save it up, or you'll be left with nothing."

And then seeing what is, as it is, I realize I am not strong but hard, like diamonds. And aren't they, after all, a girl's best friend? So I must be grateful for the sandy grain moments that fill the spaces between the rocks and hard places and try to build a castle, ever mindful lest it become a fortress.