Love Poem: Wedding Toast
C.W. Bryan Avatar
Written by: C.W. Bryan

Wedding Toast

I am at a wedding
in Iowa.
She called to tell me 
that the orange afterimage
from that afternoon five years ago
has filled her brain for the first time
in years.

I don’t have the heart
to tell her I am at a wedding
in Iowa

& that the memory of her sits
in the front of my mind each day
like a scarecrow in a corn field.

It wouldn’t break her heart 
or anything—nothing would,

but I can’t bring myself to tell her that I 
have stolen her likeness,
I have hired a gardener, someone to tend
the apricot trees she planted,

someone to prune the ashen dust
from the perennial flowers
that grow in her stead.

Each day I pick one, 
and her hips move through the grocery store, 
her laugh echoes in a vinyl booth,
her hand moves a pawn one square forward.

I stick it in the windowsill, right
behind my eyelids and slake my thirst
on tepid water.

None of this would break her heart, of course—
nothing would.

 I don’t tell her about the wedding, the one
in Iowa, just in case.