Relationships Do Not Preclude Issues

They Were Things For Which It Was Impossible To Prepare But Which One Spent A Lifetime Looking Back At, Trying To Accept, Interpret, Comprehend. Things That Should Never Have Happened, That Seemed Out Of Place And Wrong, These Were What Prevailed, What Endured, In The End.

She Is Stunned That In This Town There Are No Sidewalks To Speak Of, No Streetlights, No Public Transportation, No Stores For Miles At At A Time.

He Tries To Peel The Image From The Sticky Yellow Backing, To Show Her The Next Time He Sees Her, But It Clings Stubbornly, Refusing To Detach Cleanly From The Past.

Each Day She Removes A Small Portion Of The Unwanted Things In People's Lives, Though All Of It, She Thinks, Was Previously Wanted, Once Useful. She Feels The Sun Scorching The Back Of Her Neck. The Heat Is At Its Worst Now, The Rains Still A Few Months Away. The Task Satisfies Her. It Passes The Time.

And Wasn't It Terrible, How Much He Looked Forward To Those Moments, So Much So That Sometimes Even A Ride By Himself On The Subway Was The Best Part Of The Day? Wasn't It Terrible That After All The Work One Put Into Finding A Person To Spend One's Life With, After Making A Family With That Person, Even In Spite Of Missing That Person...that Solitude Was What One Relished The Most, The Only Thing That, Even In Fleeting, Diminished Doses, Kept One Sane?