The weight of adulthood has hounded me ever since
my first period, as though growing up meant subscribing

to a monthly pain plan. See how low I scale on the happiness
index: how I zombie through my commute, how I blend

into a crowd. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a breadwinner;
maybe I want to be some kind of performance artist or acrobat.

Maybe I should move to Norway or Denmark, the happiest places
in the world, next to Disneyland. Would I rather be miserable

with all my friends, or all alone and secure? There is nothing my country
can do for me now. The economy unrewarding to the project

of emotions. We’ll take less than minimum wage for scrubbing
the Internet of beheadings. We would walk right past the pieta

of a wailing woman. We would keep someone suicidal
in a cage. Resilience, the excuse for all that our taxes

cannot deliver us from. So I switch on my GPS so God knows
I’m here: my mind’s traffic jam is just as sticky as what’s expired

in my refrigerator. I hate to admit how much I’ve become
like my mother—I’ll stuff a whole chicken for the guests,

slap on a smile, and subtext a sentence: Please accept my hospitality,
or I’ll scream. Don’t ask if I’m married. Allow me the small justice of saving

face. Filipinos are a happy people. Peel off this mask,
and you’d find another, and another. We’d wheel the carapace

of a karaoke machine across a stormland. If you pushed a coin
into its slot, we would sing so loudly you wouldn’t hear the static.