Relationships in my twenties mimic the construction of the first highways. Myself the cotton, fabric weave. The other the paved under and over the white using it for support, transport, reliability, speed and returning home for dinner. A descent from which neither sleeping or waking is possible. Living, kept, just before your ears pop. In 1926, cotton fabric, laid in longitudinal strips overlapping each other two or three inches, created the first layer of the first bituminous double surface pavement. A cotton weave to rest the weight.
A narcissist in love with you is the LA sun. The golden satin La Perla robe caressing your skin as you are carried across any threshold to which you point. The oak frame, the flat in London, the resort in Cancun, the five star hotel in Portugal all open at your nod. Waiters see the shared smiles, as wide as the distance away from home, and tell you to return next year married and expecting. Stars reflect in the puddle between Bleecker and Barrow. Counting the number of times he could have lost you, your beloved leans in under the smoke rising from long stemmed candles. Your dress shoes wet yet from the sleet, he rings your finger with earth's hardest substance.
I will say that great great grandfather had the foresight to save lives. He tried and having denied Henry Ford's request for him to convert his carriage wheel business he saved a few weeks at least. A year after the mass production of cars, in 1896, the puffed shoulders of the dress did not cushion her fall. The fabric taut around her forearms did not hold her up as she, the first person hit by a car, fractured her leg on a Manhattan street. The Massachusetts driver, perhaps from where Bostonians established their driving reputations, spent the night in jail. Today, brake lights in the rearview light up bends, a cigarette flare as a giant inhales.
Many people saw electricity for the first time at the Chicago World's Fair. The hum of the group added to the awe of the solid, unflickering luminescence even as the high-pitched rings from the filament echoed in a bulb. Seeing the light bulb for the first time was a glimpse into the future. The sense at a party that one is supposed to be having fun.