the bride in black

The bride in black

has her face turned toward the ground,

hoping no one will notice her

ugly white scar.

“That’s what a veil is for,” they told her.

She is whispering her prayer at the altar

with no one to hear her call. She could

scream but there would be no one to hear.

Her flower droops from ill use, until

the petals fall to the floor with less weight than her.

Food how we forget thee in front of the crowd

before our wedding day.

Their silence is an amphitheater of noise and abandon.

There are two worlds

and not one takes precedence over the other,

but the one is much less visible. Her hands tremble,

so that the flowers are only stems,

and the stems rattle dead in the frigid air

of her wedding chapel. Naked, she would blend

into the white of the rest of the church,

but that scar shines,

fluorescent with the fusion of the brightest

star in the sky, forever frozen in the retinas

of those gathered, that aren’t quite there.

This is the altar of disappointment,

or at least where it is built. In the hearts

of those that stand at an altar and wait

for something that may never come.

O bride in black, we would do what we could but

it would never be enough, and for that the world mourns.

Her dress is still black. Her hair is still black. Her scar

is still white as the sun.

And the stained glass shines red with the drop of crimson

in the bottom of the tub. It tastes like –

Yes honey, yes they did.