@yoursmary sent : 11 + 25 / soft & simple asks , not accepting !
11 —— describe the memory of the last time you felt true happiness .
december 14th, 2011 —— sweetwater, texas.
in a week they will be married: she blooms with the rose shade of youthful exhilaration whenever anyone casts their gaze on her. they’ve picked a bar for the reception, nothing fancy — neither of them are fancy people. this is what one might call a rehearsal dinner, but it’s an excuse like any other to get the drinks flowing, chicken wings on the house, music she dislikes but is strangely perfect for the night, booming from the corner speakers. tonight, for the first time, the motel seems a million miles away; it might as well be right across the ocean, she has a feeling she won’t set foot in there again. she feels sorry for the girls — abandoning them hurts, it’s like giving up pieces of her own ribcage. but they understand, and when they talk about the wedding night they ask shameless questions and they’ve almost lost all those shades of CONCERN from their eyes. sometimes he looks over from the other corner of the bar and he’ll turn to his friends and she can see the way his lips are moving he’s saying something like ‘my girl’, or ‘my wife’, and she feels a tingle in her stomach at that notion of belonging. it feels like a movie — one of those fuzzy romances she catches on the tv sometimes, after a long shift. the ones where the heroine refuses the idea of LOVE until a prince comes and shows her a secret so small, so meaningful it shifts the ground beneath her feet —— the kind where the act of love itself can make small women turn to queens, to goddesses. he whispered it in the car one night, after he proposed : i’ll make a queen out of you. now, when one of the girls touches her shoulders and peers over, looks into her eyes ( oh : angie would have that same look on her face ), and asks : are you sure, fred ? she stops for a second, she trembles inside, but then thinks of those movies. yeah, ali, she says. i’m sure — surer than i’ve ever been. i’m happy. he’s staring, from the other side of the bar. he’s smiling.
25 —— w hat’s a song that gives off good vibes anytime you listen to it ?
one night, when she was seven or eight, a storm had blacked the ranch out. she wasn’t truly frightened, maybe she just needed that bit of attention eight year olds need from their older siblings — she’d whined and moaned, and while grandpa went out to check on the horses angie grabbed her stereo ( the portable one: it works with batteries, too! angie had proclaimed to justify her purchase years before, when her mother had openly disapproved of her spending so much of her allowance on a stupid thingamajig ), put on the stones. ‘ gimme shelter ’ would’ve sounded ominous, but she’d made a dance of it —— give it ten minutes, the thunders kept rolling but fred’s attention was all focused on twisting her feet, mimicking her sister, singing along. grandpa had shaken his head when he’d gotten back, but he’d laughed when fred had desperately tried to bring him onto their makeshift dance floor. it didn’t work, but she remembers — he never laughed, maybe she made this up. but the memory bubbles back to the surface every time she listens to that song. it carries a heavy baggage, and afterwards she misses them harder than any other moment —— but for a second it always works its magic. reminds her of shelters: chases the storm away.
