The Far End of the Spectrum

Driving sometimes late at night the reception is better at the far end of the FM spectrum. You stop at a stop light turning left and there's no one you're stopping for, just following rules, and you've found a sweet spot where the signal comes in so clear the big band could be in the back seat with your reusable grocery bags and spare umbrella. You don't want to go when you've got the green light, not with the slide of the slide trombone like a lover's hand on your neck, not with the crooning soprano begging you to stay, stay, stay just a little bit longer.

When you go anyway, because you must for other rules and greater wants, her voice slips back into static. She is a fiction that flared only for a moment, though there's always a chance that it was she who was tuning just then into you, and not the other way around.

Controversy

In sickness and in health is open to interpretation, isn't it? In marriage we abide and tolerate because we love, not because our spouse is an image of flawlessness while retching into the toilet after a few too many beers, or because when they are fevered they are not whiny and prone to outrageous demands; for rich or for poor does not mean we will not complain when the rent is late, or consider ourselves fiscally responsible enough to tell our partners how to spend their tax return. We do it because our good times are really good, not because we haven't any bad times, because without bad times, without doing it not because we wouldn't rather be doing something - or occasionally even someone else - making such vows are empty.

It's about what's hard, not what's easy.

I got into a car accident today. It will be expensive to repair my - my husband's - car. It was an accident, but I was cited at fault. The absence of injury of either party, myself or the other driver, makes it easier to be angry and point fingers, to talk about carelessness and catastrophe. When my tears have stopped and there's room to start worrying about things like tow trucks and fines, I am afraid to draw attention to the guilt that I feel, the desire I have to be comforted. I want to be tough, I want to take responsibility, I want to be loved for not having fucked up in the first place.

I don't expect to be coddled when I've made mistakes, but goddamn is it hard when I'm not.

Petals like Pinwheels

I've finally parted with my bouquet. When we returned from our honeymoon and it was hanging on by a thread in a vase of stagnant water, I dumped the water out and returned it to the window. In the past week the stems had begun to mold, white threads like spider's silk cottoning between the withered heads of roses and chrysanthemums. I held it where it was bound still by the ribbon from my wedding dress, lifting the wilted purple sprays and letting them slump again where they had dried.

So I took the bouquet outside and up the little slope of our backyard, which is more like a thicket than something suited for mowing. I stepped through the maple saplings and honeysuckle heavy with berries to the hollow tree stump and tossed my flowers inside, feeling like a girl inventing superstition again, burying something in hopes that it would grow into a new mystery.

It was harder to do than I thought it would be.

Question and Answer

I'm relieved to no longer be engaged and suffer questions like, so what are your colors?

Being newly married, however, means I'm always being asked, so how is married life?

My answer that it is a lot like unmarried life is getting a little tired. I wonder if I should invent a fiction for us? We argue about life insurance policies? I've taken to wearing aprons while cooking, cleaning, and having sex? Seems like a solid short story to me.