Darling, stop being stupid,
she says with all the tenderness she can muster,
which is not a lot, when I bring up my ex.
At the dining table, in the gaudy rust of sunset,
she alternates between swatting mosquitos
and ladling copious amounts of food onto my plate.
*
In Bahasa, the word sayang has two meanings.
The first: love, or darling. The second: pity, or shame.
In response to an ordinary question, like, say, where did you go?
You might respond
Sayang, saya tidak kemana-mana. Darling, I didn’t go anywhere.
But you could also mean
Sayang, saya tidak kemana-mana. What a shame, I didn’t go anywhere.
*
When I discovered that I’d misinterpreted,
(because I was distracted, because the constellation of freckles
on his back looked like the tops of divers’ heads,
bobbing up for air in a sea glossed white
in the afternoon sun, because he was thumbing the Joan Didion
on my bedside table and asking if I’d let him borrow it) I was so sad.
She raided the fridge to see what she could deep fry for me.
*
In Bahasa, when you say hati, it means heart.
but when you say hati-hati, it is a flare. A warning,
to be careful.
*
When my mother is scolding me,
in the way mothers do when their daughters are heartbroken,
she says she is disappointed that I did not know better.
That I did not read the signs.
When she cries over her own him,
I understand why she scolds.
It’s the fear that makes you angry.
It scares me to think of her a breakable thing
rather than simply my mother.
*
In Bahasa, when you use the word kasih as a noun,
it means sweetheart. When you use it as a verb,
it means to give.
*
Weeks later, when I bring the boy up again
she gives me a piece of her mind. Rattles off a list
of the things she never liked about him and I secretly adore it --
the way she holds my grudges.
The way I have learnt to hold hers.
