Who calls them stampies anyhow

She had this way of getting excited about the things I thought were mundane. We'd be in the art supply store and I would round a corner to see her on tiptoe and beaming, humming to herself looking at the different paper stock, just glad as hell to be alive when put me in the same position and I'd make a mockery of joy in the aisle. At home she'd put the paint in front of her nose before putting it on the palette, go on about how she loved the smell, which it was the way she had love for the smallest moments that made me love her in the smallest moments.

And don't think it was just the art stuff. Every errand we ran was done with deliberate, cheerful energy. She sang a song about writing the rent check while she wrote it, did a little dance with her shoulders. Here's the money for you, landlord, I hope you don't buy drugs with it. She wanted to hold hands and swing our arms like kids on the way to get toilet paper and cherry tomatoes, said tomatoes with an accent. These were folk music days, and our lives were simpler than the chords laid down on beaten old four-track machines and handed out for free at some coffeehouse down in the city.

A thing like that has got to end is a thing I like to think, and when I've had too much wine I might say it out loud to myself. No surprise, then, that we were walking out of the store with pens and a book of stamps and she's got tears in her eyes and I'm thinking to myself why the fuck do you have to criticize a thing you love? Is it just so everyone's as miserable as you? That's goddamn supervillainous thinking.