star_bitten ovenbird It is often when time is most precious that it is subjected to fate’s jealous interference and so it was with a man and his love who found themselves holding a single, shining day to spend on each other as lavishly as their hearts would allow. They came to a place that promised enough freedom to build a life in a handful of hours, so you can imagine their dismay when the questing hope of their hands and mouths were interrupted continually. First it was the man’s father going on about his job as a firefighter. “It’s easy enough,” he told the pair as they held hands under the kitchen island. “Someone else does most of the work. I just hold the hose.” Next it was his mother dressed in Victorian undergarments. She wore a corset over a linen shift, and a horse hair bustle, all of it filthy as if she’d been scrubbing floors. A bonnet sat on her matted curls. She asked her son’s lover if she would mind repairing an object of deep importance. This object turned out to be a pen so tangled in hair it was barely visible beneath, but she took it from the bedraggled woman and promised to do what she could. The two retreated from the kitchen then and found a couch in a darkened living room where they thought their lips might safely meet but their embrace was foiled by a gaggle of ten year old girls, all carrying balloons and sparklers as they celebrated a birthday. The two arranged to distract the giggling masses with the tried and true soporific of television and retreated to yet another room, where they curled themselves around each other ever so briefly, only to have half a dozen parents barge in looking for their children. (One child was lost in the fray and it’s unclear whether she was ever found. Love is not particularly cognizant of others in the vicinity, and the two were unaware that the children were their responsibility in the first place.) And thus the day ended, and the ones who wanted nothing more than to bask in the light of each other’s eyes found time stolen away from them, each chance at a romantic resolution nibbled and discarded by parents and party-goers and parents of party-goers, so that all they achieved was the briefest touching of noses and hands. There are rarely enough moments to tell the truth of what any love might aspire to be and so we live in the space between words, the moments stolen, the pause before each inhale, the years that we can wrest from the hands of fate. 251111 what's it to you? who go blather from