I.
I gave myself away because I wasn’t my father’s to give.
My bone tulle train snagged on the splintered steps descending from the sweeping veranda of a Victorian seaside mansion.
Such a graceful frame: diver, swan-stance’d atop the high board hiding pigeon-toed feet on stilts under layers of bridal rosettes.
I thought right then, I can’t cut it in this cookie-cutter role.
So, I proceeded down the aisle to my honorable groom, forever my formative soulmate, and sealed my crumbling vows from my lips to his.
II.
Broken vows, breathless souls,
Mine, lodged with the shrapnel of a still and shattered heart.
“You mean, your Wife—“
I overheard the mother of the bride fell at a handsome groom,
an apparent Robby.
So I overheard at the hotel lounge, eclectic chic—
caged lanterns, chevron tiles perched above a boundless Caribbean Sea.
“Wife—“
Never again to be my name. So, call me something else,
something far less docile and disingenuous, dissentious by trade.
Let us not cut any deeper, after all,
it does rhyme so diligently with knife.
I’ve always preferred a dichotomous name,
with qualities of dark possession,
churning in converging currents:
haunting, illusory, radiant wretch.
Formidable enchantress
in even more potent, smoldering form:
Woman.