just yesterday i was saying that i was
going to marry you. i didn't know then how bad
the night would be, and how your words would wrap
themselves around my throat until i turned
blue with marble lips that no longer gasped--
gasped, like i did when you used to touch
me gently, air coming out in little bursts of breath held
in for so long that it made me dizzy.

the air grew empty then, and there was nothing left
to say besides a goodbye that tasted stale
in my mouth, as if i had been expecting
to say it all along. the words struggled out
of me, and it was all i could do to keep
from dying. i stumbled to my room and fingered
the antique white dress that had been promised to me
long ago, and it crumbled in my careless hands and turned
to dust that choked me up all over again. collapsing
on the bed, i dreamed of white dresses, flowers, and you.

now i know that i will never marry
you. the white dress doesn't belong
to me, and fairy tale endings belong in the dust-covered
books that i gave up long ago, in favor of thin
paperbacks in which the heroine insists on slitting
her wrists, as if she does not care what happens
when the blood stops. those books were my bibles and i heeded
every word as if it came from god himself.

i can't wear a white dress until my wrists clear.
when the blood has been banished and the lines turn into
cotton fields upon my skin. and i have a funny feeling
that by the time that happens, the only place i will go
in my pearly dress will be a coffin. because i am
white and blue and red all over, a flag of skin
and veins and blood. i can't marry you if you don't
want me to. and so with a flick of my wrist, i will
become death's bride.

some say the marriage bed is a coffin; maybe they're right, after all.