day·​mare

I sometimes have a daytime dream that I’m at my wedding altar with a man. With a man who I dated for a long time and who is very fun and has a beautiful smile. We have spent gleeful weekends with my friends at the Michigan cabin and played card games with my raucous family. And he has a good job that he loves, and he supports all of my ambitions without hesitation. And my heart is crusty and burnt-toast brown, because he is just fine. Inside my body, growing from my pelvis and reaching for my sternum is a Tim Burton tree, black and spindly. And it's moaning a warning song, mourning the lightning that never came. I hadn't seen the tree before. Perhaps I saw it as a sapling, but I figured everyone has little pelvis trees. I guess I figured that you can either water them with radical vulnerability and hope that they grow into a beautiful lemon tree or you can bury them with some thick soil and expect them to disintegrate into a memory. But this tree has grown and grown since I threw soil on it and donned a pair of black leather blinders. And now it's clawing at my esophagus, and I can't really breathe to say "I do," because of my sad, strong pelvis tree. So I turn to the crowd, my onlookers who I love and who love me, with a terrified and pleading look about me. And a few of them stand up as if to run and hug me or catch me (in case I faint, even though I have no history of fainting - though I suppose I have no history of wedding days, so it's a day of many news). But there's a diffusion of responsibility and they all stay where they are, eyes desperate to understand. So I turn to my fiancée and a big fat tear falls down my cheek. Then ten more come bursting out, and my knees buckle. And I'm running away, and they're chasing me along the beach, and it's all very picturesque but also very Charlie Kaufman. And as I'm swirling through and beyond our wedding venue that we spent many good-not-great nights picking out, I'm also swirling through and beyond our shared memories and I can't stop thinking "he's fine." And I'm so mad and sad at myself for letting fine be fine until it was too late, which is so not fine. And now his heart is shattered and mine is like a deflated whoopie cushion, and the fart noise wasn't funny at all, it was hideous. And now there's a pink rubber puddle on the chair, and everyone should probably walk away and leave it be, because it probably needs to be alone right now. And my tree inside is giving Angry Orchard, and I'm quite upset at the tree for not being louder earlier, so we have words, and I look back and everyone is out of breath from our beach run. And we're all stopped, panting on the beach, dazed and fully aware of the irreversibility of the preceding spectacle. There are better ways to exercise than running after a groom who didn't know what he wanted.