Photograph in which children are throwing rice at your wedding dress

Maybe they are paper airplanes, or goosenecks made from linen napkins,

clappers taken from every bell within fifty miles. I imagine that, when you

gathered your train, to get into the car, streamered with tin cans that rattled

newlywed the whole way home, grains fell from the hand-stitched fabric

with a hush.

I feed you a spoonful of rice that’s been soaking in broth. You look down

at the bowl. You say what a beautiful ceremony, and even though I wasn’t

a thought yet, (and am now one forgotten), I look down at the floor with you,

littered with a rain of white, and wait for the birds to come.

 

Megan Merchant

Megan Merchant lives in the tall pines of Prescott, AZ with her husband and two children. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections with Glass Lyre Press: Gravel Ghosts (2016), The Dark’s Humming (2015 Lyrebird Award Winner, 2017), Grief Flowers (2018), four chapbooks, and a children’s book, These Words I Shaped for You (Philomel Books). She was awarded the 2016-2017 COG Literary Award, judged by Juan Felipe Herrera, the 2018 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, and most recently, second place in the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She is an Editor at The Comstock Review and you can find her work at meganmerchant.wix.com/poet.