3/13/13

Ashes/Dust
By Chad Stroup


I struggle to recall the entirety of our wedding day. Our album only contains pages full of fragments, brief moments of joy that never reveal the full story. I’ll never live those moments again.
Rather than a potent memory, my redundant dreams more closely resemble a midnight viewing of an obscure foreign silent film, long after my will, my wake has surrendered.
Blurred faces that aren’t quite ours, but are, move in for a kiss as a badly sequenced, yet jovial piano score tiptoes in the background. My eye’s camera zooms in to your tender hand stroking the small of my back, caressing my hypocritically virgin white dress.
The title card reads:

“IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH”

Translated in fancy cursive, displayed with nausea-inducing repetition, the words burn a permanent image into my retina.
The black and white fades to cliché grey. The credits never roll.
I wish this vision could be a talkie instead.

I’m sorry I refused to let you buy that cherry ’64 Mustang (it really wasn’t that expensive). I’m sorry we never made it to China (so you could connect with your half-roots). I’m sorry I made fun of your feet (even though the second toe was longer than the first). I’m sorry we never had the chance to have a son (and that our daughter’s memory of you will, in time, be even hazier than mine). I’m sorry you faced amnesia in those first few weeks (and that CJD was the guilty party, not a simple bump on the head). I’m sorry I couldn’t save—

My husband: imprisoned by the urn. Each year, on our anniversary, at the late hours we used to find inspiration in adventurous sex, I promise to take a fingertip of ash and draw an “X” across my exposed left breast. Carnal knowledge and marital duty dwell forever in my heart.
I want you inside me, a part of me.
Remember?


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Chad Stroup is currently pursuing his MFA in Fiction at San Diego State University. His work has recently been featured in Penduline, Educe Journal, and the anthology Enter at Your Own Risk: Fires and Phantoms.