Sunday, March 1, 2009

My Wedding Vows

Because I've gotten several requests, I've decided to write it here. The truth is, I joked with Mindy about pulling a privacy curtain around us while we did our vows (because it's no one's business but ours), but I got over it and said them aloud. Now, I guess, I'm shouting them.

October 18, 2008:

"I know it's cliche' to compare love, or anything to a river. But the river is all I know. It was my lover when I was young, kissing me with falling leaves, cool water licking my toes.

There was a time when i wrote my human lovers' names on pieces of paper and let the river take them under. I thought I was doing the right thing. Instead, the river ate them--devoured my relationships, swallowed me whole. But you, I never told it about you. But the river knows who I turn to now, who I spend my time with, whose rushing wind makes me tingle.

And now I cry into you. Sit by your banks in celebration. I skip rocks across you to see the ripples.

You comfort and seduce me--calling me from distant places to stare into where the water and sky meet, where the world seems ancient and unchanging. You have carved yourself into me, through me, over me. Because that is how the river and earth become one."

2 comments:

  1. Wow. So... did this make Mindy absolutely melt in front of all your friends and loved one?

    ReplyDelete
  2. she looked shy. she held it together pretty well.

    ReplyDelete

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Writer, teacher, and archaeologist. Contributing essayist in the anthology "Crooked Letter I: Coming Out In the South" from NewSouth Books.