Rob S. Friedman
October 2021
System Preferences
He chose the white cup that had her name red painted by one of the grandchildren while waiting out the rain.
Eleven more surrounded it in the cupboard, each one eponymous, all empty objects now, variables no longer called.
The array was limited to evocative names, properties of those who strained to mute their masked and simmering grievances.
Each cup a pointer to the family tree, glazed totems of generational sadness and anger that time congealed into classes of disappointment.
Each one a token without purchase, standing amassed, atrophied and brittle, each a martyr’s reliquary of regrets.
If the grandparents’ cups, then two versions of a dream else ones containing the rivalry of their sons and daughters or the palpable bewilderment of the next generation.
He chose his wife, as no one else would dare, to once again review and recollect and reassess his time and memory of her.
That very cup so often resting on butcher block as she takes in the ocean with every sense, and watches a bumblebee alight for the daylily’s nectar.
Rob S. Friedman 