My parents eloped. There are two photographs. The one he took of her. And the one she took of him. It is the way we see them throughout our childhood. Him through her and she through him.
He stands by a mailbox, impossibly thin and his face is covered in hippy beard. The beard is mine, too red to be brown and too brown to be red. His hair is my sisters, dark and wavy but without the weight hers has. His eyes, his eyes are my brothers and he is the closest to seeing out them. You can see the beginning in the way his pants are snug at the hips. You can see the end in the shoulders that carry everything. His smile is a cat that couldn’t quite swallow the canary.
She sees all this right away, the way you can see your entire future with someone in the first minute you meet them, every possible door. She sees it and she tucks it in her heart. She sees it and knows it and breaths it and owns it. She walks in anyway, it’s her door.
They met through his sister. They met in a parking lot, my mom in a car with her Beauty School friends, smoking cigarettes and at the edge of alone in the big wide world. She is clean virgin and simple beauty, an apology for everything. He says “I’m not your pardoner” and she apologizes for that as well.
He carries it and she’s so sorry.
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