Bride, by ​Molly O’Toole

My Fiancée with Black Gloves, by Marc Chagall (France) 1909

​Bride 
 
I have never been made of much:
sloping curves, borrowed fabric to hold them
long slick silken hair, fine as millet grass 
a hollowed throat.
 
By these green leaves:
a marriage is fragile, like a broach on a collar 
like threads of bobbin lace 
like the blue-gray in limbo of black and white 
 
No one is coming to get me.
Would they like it if I walked in 
cock-headed and sneering, taking large steps 
with shoes mismatched and legs bowed?
 
If I did it all goat-like and mad, screeching 
at the donkeys and the guests 
far bigger than the pastures and bigger than I ought to be
My hat a window, my gloves grieving

I am waiting at the door to make a tiptoed debut 
my dreams are flimsy birds that know nothing, 
children sleeping in my silent nest
He waits below with open arms and gleaming teeth

​Molly O’Toole 
 
Molly O’Toole (she/her) is a young writer and recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame. She is originally from Arlington, Massachusetts, but currently living in Sacramento, CA, with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. Her favourite body of water at the moment is the Passagassawakeag River in Waldo County, Maine.