In a Devon chapel, surrounded by trees pressing so close the quality of light inside takes on the aspect of being underwater, we wait. 

I’ve always waited. She did things in her own time; this moonlight wedding was testimony enough. 

Eventually, the organ swells and she appears at the narthex, framed by notes. Even over its blast, you can feel the intake of breath, an anticipatory silence. 

There she is, walking to her appointment with the man her parents are delighted she’s marrying. I get the idea she’s not human, but a translation of the Gospels in human form; female Messiah. 

She ignores me. I squat, malingering with unfinished business, in the backmost pew, hidden from the judgment of the congregation’s earthbound eyes. 

As she passed, I recall I always considered her taller than I, even though the reverse is true. But the dress that seems somehow upholstered upon her rather than worn, towers above me, its crepe, gray folds as dramatic as the White Cliffs. 

Moving imperceptibly, as if only my expectation divines movement, she proceeds from nave to knave. I tell myself her legato is borne from reluctance. She has no love for him: the safe bet; the accountant. 

What does he know of her needs? What does he know of the touch that electrifies her just below her ear, or how she wriggled with delight under my fingertips? 

Can he sit with her in silence in the same room without the need for trivial talk, in a love that transcends words? 

It takes a woman to know a woman. 



I hang on to her words, dreading the “I do”. 

Hanging on her words… a sick pun. 

As the bouquet is thrown, I return to the lament as the keening wind blows over my grave.