My favorite love stories are never perfect, nor published.  They’re scribbled on torn, oily scraps of Chinese menus and on oddly-shaped post-it notes.  They tell tales of shared vices: cheap wine, and coffee, and cigarettes.  They’re a mash-up of cute clichés and fantastic fights, of romance and ridicule, fortitude and frailty.  Lost loves reconciling despite how unhealthy they were together, not staying together for the kids, knowing each others’ differences and making them work because people don’t change.  

Once, I overheard a stranger tell his wife how pretty he thought she was and she yelled at him.  I like to imagine when they made up because he said he didn’t mean it, but he knew that he really did and that he always had.