If I die before I am a bride,
bury me with these words in my mouth,
as an I-told-you-so for the creator.

If I go clutching my maiden name
in arthritic hands like beads of a rosary,
tell about it at my funeral.

There must be a hymn to sing,
something like:
I kept every vow I ever made.

Put me in the ground in ****** white.
As if that'll erase the one-nights, love's malformations,
the way that matrimony might have,
in simpler times.

If I die with vacant bedsides, I instruct you:
take me to autopsy
remove my heart and check for scars,
then instruct the mortician to place it in my hands.

Like a bouquet.

To have and to hold.