The bride looked like she hadn’t slept in days.
She didn’t put up much of a fight
when the rent-a-cops slapped the handcuffs on
and walked her down the aisle.

I sat in the back,
counted twenty-seven fire extinguishers in the church
and wondered if I had ever been honest with her
or the groom. If I had ever shared a cab with either or even both
of them and laid out so much of the deeply personal that the driver
got nervous and tried to launch us through a black hole liquor store.

The groom got to the alter fifteen minutes later.
He showed up drunk in a wheelchair and got a pretty good laugh
from his friends and business associates.

There was no family to be found anywhere from either side.
The priest was made of cardboard and six tape recorders
speaking at once.

I sat in the back,
closed my eyes when the ceremony finally started
and tried to listen for an update on the tornado warning
from an hour ago. I still wasn’t sure if those things
were capable of picking up on fear or understanding train schedules.

The wedding was supposed to be my last hurrah
in this part of the world. My bags were all packed,
and my sense of humor was feeling creative again.

I had no designs on where I would go.
I had no intention of staying in any one place
long enough to know who to vote for.

In fact I would have left sooner
if not for this wedding. It was actually supposed to have taken place
over a year ago. There were a lot of false starts, a lot of televised disasters.

A number of unexpected, previously unknown
lovers and whores kept showing up to both propose and threaten
physical and emotional violence.

I would have left town sooner,
but I was unfortunately committed and wanted to end
the year with at least six unselfish acts.

When the wedding finally happened
it went on for hours. The bride kept slurring
and changing personalities. The groom wouldn’t stop
playing to the eight-thousand strong crowd.

I waited patiently.
I sang along,
clapped at all the right times.

I even went to the reception
that turned into an orgy after ten minutes.

It was the kind of thing I tend to avoid,
so I stayed by the bar, and that’s where I ran into
an old friend of mine.

He jumped out of the cake
and didn’t waste any time in believing
that there were better places to be.

I had plans to get the hell out of town,
but somehow he talked me into leaving.

We hit up a gas station on Insensitive Lane,
and from there is more or a less a straight line
to why I haven’t left in the six years since then.

Being on the run in a neon labyrinth is exhausting.
Know what I mean?

06/26/2010

Posted on 06/26/2010
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard