I’m not sure which anniversary it was this year.  I’ve never heard a story set when they weren’t together, except the one of the day they met.  

It was a autumn day, with the sun whispering down on the remains of a fall carnival.  I don’t think this carnival was actually there, but it sounds nice and I’ve never imagined it differently.  A few blocks away a girl of eighteen pushes a carriage down a sidewalk, wistfully peering into closed shop windows.  In the carriage, of course, is her sister, my mother, a baby at the time.  

Pretty in the autumn evening, she sees him out of the corner of her eye.  To her, he’s just another figure passing on the street.  To him, well.  He says something witty.  

I’ve been told what the witty thing is, but I can’t quite remember.  It doesn’t matter anyway, really.  

Yesterday they sat at our kitchen table, across from each other, my mother and father between them.  The four spoke of nothing, with soft opinions that wore long, as the coffee maker was refilled once, twice.  The two echoed the same story, their words overlapping and interchanging.  

Then she asks with a strange smile, “What is married love?”

Some Violent Femmes for you?