The couple chases their perfect marriage across the velvety grass. The perfect marriage is a wet pink bubble. It\u2019s bigger than a house, and it bounces away over the gently rolling meadow. Its woozy shimmer trembles in the breeze. The couple hurries after it. The ground is slick where their perfect marriage has been. The marriage speeds up. The couple breaks into sprints. The husband huffs and puffs in his dark suit, but the wife was a track star in college. She quickly exceeds him. He admires her familiar grace as he stops to spit onto the soaked grass. She runs with her arms outstretched to seize their perfect marriage.<\/p>\n
He starts a steady, slow jog. He\u2019s waiting until she and the marriage get tired out and lie down, so he can corner them. He will conserve his energy and when he gets there he will be in a perfect position to enjoy them both. But when he reaches the spot where their perfect marriage hovered like a watery Harvest moon, he finds only his wife, doing hamstring stretches. He squints at the horizon and sees their perfect marriage in the distance, the size of a whoopee cushion.<\/p>\n
His wife looks at the sweat that shines on his face and neck. She listens to him trying to catch his breath. She thinks, he\u2019s not going to be around forever. No matter how much bran cereal I buy, one day, I\u2019ll be waiting for someone to come out and tell me how the angioplasty went. That will be me. I\u2019ll be the wife. Still, she moans,\u201cOh, stretching feels so good.\u201d She touches her toes. He\u2019s still panting. \u201cGod I love stre-e-etch-ing,\u201d she says, bracing her palms against the marriage-slickened grass and rising to her tiptoes. She looks up at him through her legs.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I\u2019m not doing that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome on,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like it. It doesn\u2019t feel good to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should just try.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI try all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen stop trying. Do.\u201d She stands up and lifts her left ankle to her left ear and slowly bends her right knee. Squelches the sodden turf with her one legged squat.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going after it,\u201d he says, even though he can\u2019t see it anymore, even though the sun is setting, even though the dew will soon overwhelm their perfect marriage\u2019s moist trail. He runs until he gasps and walks. When his breathing slows he listens for his wife\u2019s quick, even footsteps, but hears only the squish of wet grass beneath her strengthening.<\/p>\n\n\n
Emily Anderson<\/strong>\u2019s writing has appeared in a variety of publications including McSweeney\u2019s, Caketrain, DIAGRAM<\/em> and, mostly recently, Bateau.<\/em> She is a first-year student in the doctoral program in English at the University at Buffalo. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The couple chases their perfect marriage across the velvety grass. The perfect marriage is a wet pink bubble. It\u2019s bigger than a house, and it bounces away over the gently rolling meadow. Its woozy shimmer trembles in the breeze. The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[22039],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1800,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions\/1800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libblogs.luc.edu\/requited\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}