Every Day

Every day I see the ocean. It always gleams some shade of blue from the top of the hill on the Promenade. Oil rigs dot it, some days forming a line out to see, other days just one anchors near shore. At night, you can watch them light up like neighborhoods at Christmas. The rains come in over the sea. Grey, misty clouds that softly overtake you, and then they pass. If you are lucky, maybe a rainbow will pass overhead, fleeting in its breathtaking pause.

Every night, the white flowers whose names I have never known find a source of light. Street lamps, moonlight, stars, it does not matter. They capture it, and they glow as if the light came from within. Other flowers, fragile lavender blossoms, appear as if dying, only to tuck themselves into a bud to rest when eyes would be unable to appreciate them anyway. Four-inch-long caterpillars make quick work of some leaves, arching their backs and smiling back at me.

Every day, someone here makes me smile. Sometimes, it's a friend in a text, sometimes a patient. A hug, a little six year old following you, grinning back with missing front teeth, peering around a door, not crying but laughing when her skin is punctured by a needle. Someone who wants to know--who are you? What do you do? What do you know? And they listen, they want you to tell them. Someone who tells you--you must visit Tobago. Jump up for Carnival. Try doubles. Tell me again what it means to have HIV? Sometimes they cry, and all I can do is listen. Is give them a hug, promise them yes, you are strong enough. Just to choose to fight is strong enough. I promise.

Every night, the sun sets. Sometimes it floods the floors with brilliant yet soft oranges and pinks, sometimes the colors are stifled by a cloudbank, or lack of clouds, and only tiny colors and pale rays of light can escape. The dusk sets in and carries the hush that silences all. Even the traffic obeys. The stars begin to emerge, reminding you they never really disappeared in the first place. Without them, we would have no light.