The Wedding

The bride is beautiful, as all brides are,

her flowing gown of white in this case, not a lie.

She’s known the groom forever and it almost hurts

to watch him standing there so tall and straight.

His eyes are fixed upon her face and he can only grin.

They’ve waited, unlike most, perhaps the only virgins left

within their demographic. They are sure their love

will be forever, certain everything will be as perfect

as their kisses and the flowers in her hair that rustle

gently in the breeze. They stand beneath the trees surrounded

by their families and friends who sit in Sunday best and fan

themselves a little with their hands. The afternoon’s as warm

as every heart that listens as the happy couple makes their promises,

the binding contract only broken if one dies. He’ll cherish her

and she, because that’s how they roll, she says she will obey.

No one will come between, no matter what they face,

they’ll always be united, two become one flesh,

(or will be very soon). The woman’s sitting by an in-law who, 

she knows, has understanding of what they’re up against,

the mindset not from Mars at all, but further, from another galaxy. 

They laugh about it now and then. She leans in to the other’s

shoulder, whispering so no one else will hear. “Do you think,” she asks, 

“that we should tell them just how hard it’s going to be?”

She chuckles but says nothing, and they sit there silently,

knowing that if anyone had warned them long ago when

they stood there in white (both lying, by the way) they

would have scoffed, too young, unformed, too confident

to ever think they’d change profoundly, growing

up into the women they are now, or that their husbands,

brothers from another world, would never think they should.


What started as a June assignment for the writers' group I attend turned into this poem. The theme was "weddings" and it developed from there.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2019

July 1st

It feels like June was never here,

as if the record of my life was scratched;

the needle jumped and now it is July.

June bled out slowly, in reality. My mind

goes back and plays the record at

another speed to slow it down, revisit

every moment of the early part with projects

filling time and then the phone call on the 10th

that stopped the clock, the calendar,

the calm that settled in for days and weeks,

that lulled me into thinking I was fine.

Decisions, deadlines, Daddy's death

and boxes of the memories he left behind,

photographs of people with no names,

of buildings without people, trees, flowers

more than anything as if their momentary

blooms had been a lesson that we didn't

even recognize the need to learn.

Smiling children who grew up with him

would sit and weep on padded pews and later, 

shovel dirt inside the hole beside my son. 

But that was then and now it is July, too soon

and yet, in many ways, not soon enough.

(c) Ellen Gillette, 2019