the bride reflects, by Julie Runacres

The Attirement of the Bride, by Max Ernst (Germany) 1940

the bride reflects
 
Before I married, I don’t believe I thought of myself in third person - it happened then [laughs]. I suppose I awoke to the knowledge that I was the focus of it all: the event of marriage, of course, but also the act - what is a bride if not the centre, the final destination? And how could I experience that, being her? I needed to detach myself, somehow, from self-consciousness, and become pure object. As soon as I understood that, it was a heightened state - aroused, yes, that - but other things too. I felt a kind of wisdom descend, a knowledge that was timeless, prophetic even, and both blessing and a kind of curse [laughs] because it was so very sombre! And I watched my body peel away from its old ways, become a vessel, to be surveyed and turned about and, yes, violated, and I saw it all, as has happened to all those brides before me, myself coming, stepping through ruins, out into the light. 

Julie Runacres
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Recently retired, Julie Runacres taught English language, literature and creative writing at schools in Oxford and West London. Her poems have appeared in journals in the UK and the US, though she writes chiefly for wellbeing and a distraction from living in the UK.