This Is Probably Not What You Had In Mind

One of my friends likes to ask people if they had sex on their honeymoon and more often than not, the answer is no. Too tired, too stressed, pissed off about the wedding. A lot of people admit to ordering pizza. I'm never surprised by the answers -- anything that involves something as horrible as a receiving line (where people hug you over and over again and tell you how happy they are for you) does not seem like a recipe for erotica.

I've been to surprisingly few weddings -- my friends by and large haven't been compelled to the domestic way of life. One of them was in a bar where my friend Angela decorated the place for the bride Angela, covering walls full of taxidermied animal heads with lace curtains. If I were writing fiction, I'd say that you could see the heads through the lace, especially as the sun started to set. But in the interest of full-disclosure, Angela is a consumate perfectionist and nothing showed, not so much as a stray hair or tooth. Still, it was a comfort to know something real and dead was behind the pretty bolts of lace and tulle, something that was once living, preserved for all eternity.


Michelle's Spell of the Day

"There's something about saying you were married once. It's like saying you were dead once." Margaret Atwood

The Bad Seed

1 shot of pomegrante juice
1 shot of vodka

Served chilled in a martini glass.

Benedictions and Maledicitons

First published in Emrys Journal

This Is Probably Not What You Had In Mind When I Told You I Loved You

You enter with your heart behind your back.
Pick a hand, you say. I choose the right
one, which is to say the one that is actually
clutching something. Unwrapped, it bleeds
all over me, and I would like to be buried
where your heart once was before you handed
it to me. Your empty hands now dangle
by your sides. If you wash them, maybe we can eat.