The painting reads Let’s Get Married underneath two Vietnamese kids wrapping arms. One carries a flag for the North. The other a flag for the South. This was painted during the war he told me when I bought it in a cluttered, hot street market in Hội An that smelled like fish and water. When the country was split apart, that’s when it was painted. Cause people wanted peace, symbolized by the dove. He pointed to the blue dove in the halo just above their heads.
Here in my country, we may as well be split like the Vietnamese were. We don’t fight with bullets or bombs but with words and legislature. Where are we calling for peace with a red flag in one hand and blue in the other with doves above our heads? Where are our Let’s Get Married signs?
Where are we, calling for peace, with a red flag in one hand and blue in the other, with doves above our heads?
Or maybe I have it all wrong. Maybe we are married. We are married and we fight cause that’s what married people do. They fight and they fight until it’s unbearable and they’re so tired of being blistered and bruised that they compromise cause that’s the only thing left to do.
I walked away from the vintage Vietnamese stand with my new print in a bag. The salesman waved. The ground was wet from rain.