Choosing

I chose when I tasted that first bite of pomegranate seeds mixed up with tamarind and hot pepper that the eager vendor scooped into your palm. "Taste this" you said, and offered me your hand. (I don't think I had noticed you before.)

The child doesn't get to choose, but I do, and have. Sitting on a sand beach listening to the waves slap in I see her building sand castles (dream castles) while you squat in the surf sifting through rocks carried in with the waves. You toss three into my lap. One is smooth orange shot through with streaks of silver gray, one brilliant pink, one transparent, glossy: a sea diamond. Squeezing the stones in my palm I lift my face and smile into the wind. Even in angry times, when your words pelt like sharp stones against my ears; even then I remember that I chose, and am still choosing. So I take the pretty, brilliant pink stone and place it atop the dream castle she builds in the sand. Smiling, she claps her hands. I do not tell her that in an hour's time it will be carried out with the tide.