The Short Marriage of a Bride and Groom
All I wanted to do was run but my patent leather footwear sank into the frosting. I was the guy wearing a tuxedo smiling on top of the wedding cake. My wife joined me there on the happiest day of our lives. Things went wrong the second they sliced into the cake. Imagine being in an earthquake and having the world open up in front of you. Would you be able to run? You’d think someone might have prepared me; given me a talking to or purchased me a set of snowshoes.
My wife stood there, a smile painted on her face, her dress hard and unmoving. It was the sign of things to come as on our wedding night when I tried to take that dress off it would not budge. Talk about frustrating. For hours I attempted to remove that dress. I’d been stiff all day but now when it counted I couldn’t even get a decent dry hump out of it. She was sexless. She didn’t move. Plastic.
That set the stage for the beginning of our new life together. We spent a lot of it lying around. I realized now that we never spoke, never even left the house. After a few years we became removed from one another. My friend told me he saw her on top of another cake.
I often feel used and forgotten now. I’ve been left at the bottom of a utility drawer which rarely gets opened. Maybe my dream girl will someday find me laying with the coupons, paperclips, ten dozen pennies, the back-up to the back-up corkscrew and a refrigerator magnet from a closed auto repair shop. When she does, I’ll know what to do beyond the top of a cake.
Four Days before Thanksgiving, Boston to Colorado
the daughter’s trip, a travail
cross country;
her mother’s painkillers
were not the finisher
she needed— the white sheets
of the institution were too thin
to provide any comfort
as she dreamt of swimming;
a backstroke suspended
over a waterless pool
her father stayed in the house,
loud oracular crying
from being left behind
Much louder than the open knifed
berating, which continued
until her mother opened the orange bottle
Years early, there was the silence
from a soft sliding
of the daughter's nightgown
opened to his hand
the tightness of her breath
leapt into his groin
so she says now,
mother, it's my job to take you
over the mountains—
away from what you know
there will be snow tomorrow
but today we drive
Timothy Gager is the author of seven books of fiction and poetry. He has read with three Pulitzer Prize winners and has been nominated for four Pushcart Awards. He lives on www.timothygager.com