also-rans.

the acrid smell of the burnt teakettle was curling up in the back

you are known, you are recognized, the both of you. You both find the exact same things worth remembering. (Just one olive, though.) You have the same rhythm. Click. You just know each other. All of a sudden you see reading in bed and waffles on Sunday and laughing at nothing and his mouth on yours. And it’s so far beyond fine that you know you can

They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride through life like conjoined jellyfish—expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other’s spaces liquidly. Making it look easy, the soul-mate thing.

she’d sigh and turn to her secret mental notebook on which she tallied all my deficiencies, forever noting disappointments, frailties, shortcomings.

glib.

derisively.

Three morbidly obese hill people on motorized scooters are between me and my morning coffee. Their asses mushroom over the sides of the contraptions, but they still need another Egg McMuffin. There are literally three people, parked in front of me, in line, inside the McDonald’s.

Over just a few years, the old Amy, the girl of the big laugh and the easy ways, literally shed herself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and out stepped this new, brittle, bitter Amy. My wife was no longer my wife but a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, nervous fingers. Country fingers.