‘get married soon,’ mother says. ‘it will be good for you. you’re getting old. you need to have somebody with you.’ i ask her why why why, and it always boils down to one word. partnership. ‘like the partnership between anjero and sugar.’ i tell her i dislike anjero, so she says ‘fish and chips. A marriage is fish and chips. you need each other to fill your bellies well. it is a partnership’ if i ask her about love, she shakes her head with vigour. ‘i’m not talking about love. love ruins things. a marriage is not made of love. but partners.’ so for once i listen to her, and i take a good look. i look at the partnership between my aunt’s bruised cheek and her husband’s knuckles. i gaze at the partnership between my father’s no’s and my mother’s yes’s and how his ‘no’ always has the last word. i look at the partnership between my grandmother’s loose cannon mouth and the holes it leaves in my grandfather’s heart. and finally I have an answer for my mother. I tell her ‘I grieve for all the people who have been told that a person chewing on what their soul has to offer rather than kissing it, is what a marriage is.