Evening light, like youth, burnishes the hair
of late wedding guests around me.
She is always within a few pews
despite the erratic geography of dreams
that moves whispering bodies and friends
in an intricate social lottery.

Should I describe her dress to you?
Who could resist this desire
to convey the familiar topography
of each breast rising
above a thin receding plain of cotton?

I sometimes wish I could tell you
how at eighteen her ribs swelled
against her skin with each deep breath.
I’ve wanted to count them
pressing into my chest
as I now know I could have,
but this is not that poem.

You see, my wife is in this poem
circulating in the pews,
and she is the reason
I didn’t count those ribs
late, very late one Saturday night
before this other woman and I
left home for different colleges.

My wife glances at me
glancing at this woman.
She raises an eyebrow at me,
and she looks away, patient or bored,
when this other woman
is finally on my lap
staring me in the face
through a torrent
of loose brunette curls
which seem to smolder
in this evening light
in the middle of a wedding
in a church.

From experience I know
I won’t take this woman’s offering,
even within a dream.

I wake below a bank of lush coverings,
confused in the delicate limbs
of my wife. She snores faintly,
unfazed by this dream I’ve had.

Want to comment on this Poetry? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Poetry and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...