robin
When she was getting married, we joked and called her "princess," until she told us to stop. It was only funny because she wanted to be treated like a princess, but she didn't want to be labeled one. The shame wasn't in the self-absorbed behavior, it was in the titling. Turns out, it had nothing to do with getting married.
Her back is to him as she works at the counter, slicing tomatoes for sandwiches. He rambles about something she can't quite follow; engines or something, and she struggles with the dull blade. The tomato slices are jagged and uneven and she feels a tear starting to escape from her eye as she realizes their glaring imperfection.
Sometimes, when he's trying to teach me something, he skips all the general background and dives right into the specifics of things- of how to build a house or wire a home or connect a solar panel. And sometimes I just want to scream that I don't get the difference between amps and watts and volts, and sometimes, that I don't even care to understand it. But I listen and agree and nod my head, because I love him a lot.
There are moments I remember only for the way the music made me feel through headphones as I walked those blocks to work every morning. Grace Potter is her own ragged company, Dolly Parton whining "why'd you come in here looking like that" and Elvis, always Elvis, because we just can't go on together with suspicious minds.
When my friend's mother was arrested for drunk driving, the ball of yarn started to unwind and tangle all over my friend's life, and all you could do if you loved her was provide this ubiquitous, ever-changing and unclear thing called "support."
I rode this boat to the land of icebergs. It was too beautiful, too awe-inspiring to retain later. I remember now that it was significant natural beauty, unlike anything I had ever seen before, but I can't remember why. The mountains were not high, but rugged. The sea was not scary, but massive. I thought my mind was taking a picture, but my mind failed where I camera would have, too.
She used to sit, all ninety pounds of her, sunk back in a tired seventies couch in the light beside a fire. Her finger, knobby with swollen knuckles, might be poised in the perfect arc before her face, punctuating whatever phrase she was forming behind her lipsticked lips.