wedding draft 2

Liam and I were eating dinner at our favorite dumpling shop when he proposed.  The streets were frosted with sparkly ice.  The wind was slippery and had jewel drop flakes.  I was eating spicy pork and he was slurping down sesame noodles with extra tamari.  The walls were red and the tablecloth was black paper.  I looked at Liam’s frosty cheeks and dew coated eyelashes.  I said I’d have to think about it for a couple days.  Five minutes later I said yes.

I found a silk turban in a thrift shop and I laced it with glitter and silk flowers to wrap around my hair for the ceremony.  Our friend, Brett, lent Liam a kimono that his Japanese girlfriend had bought him.  They’d split up and he didn’t want it anymore.  We went to the nearest mall and took sloppy photobooth pictures and glued halos of fairy dust and calligraphied the details around our laughing faces and sent them off as wedding invitations.  

The toothbrush was normal and plastic pink.  It had stiff bristles and it spoke to me.  I tried to take it back to the drugstore on the corner but the saleslady wearing yellow crocs said toothbrushes were nonreturnable and smirked.  The snow was coming down as through a sifter and I went home and made a rose tinted cake.  The toothbrush talked to me while I worked.    

I showed it to Liam when he came home from his art class.  The toothbrush told us stories about its travels through the mountains in China.  It told us of its past lives.  It had been a penguin last.  It offered to grant us one wish.

The next day Liam and I fought about what to wish for as the snow dusted the world outside.  I took the genie brush and ran.  We hid in a pizzeria where my friend Ollie worked for two days. We ate poppy red pizzas and drank root beer and then we went back to Liam.

April rolled around.  Liam and I discussed what our wish would be.  It was spring and while our friends  in the backyard, I walked down the aisle to Rain Dogs by Tom Waits.  Liam waited for me in a shiny bubble at the end.  His freckle-glossed nephew, Chester, held out the ring cushion...It was empty.  

Chester shuffled and looked at the egg yolk sun.  I slipped the toothbrush out of the sash of my sunflower dress and placed it on the pillow.  We both took one end of the toothbrush and closed our eyes and wished.  And the toothbrush shrieked and sang and leapt into the air like a baton, raining a dolphin of wishes and magic on all of our guests.  It grew pink shoots and shimmied in the glowing air.  And through the balloons and mist, I saw a man in a pink pin striped suit with a glassy faceted emerald brooch grin crazily and slowly sink into the ground.  A tiny winking flower bloomed where he had stood.

wedding draft 1

I gleamed promisingly as he unlatched the lid of my velvet case.  He sucked in his breath, admiring my golden curves and the tantalizing sparkle of happily ever after that I stood for.  A soft, strangled noise escaped his throat at the sight of my price tag, but he quickly recovered, masking it as a whistle.  The saleslady, Estella, who always secretly changed from her heels into pink crocs as soon as her boss left, snapped the lid of my box closed.  It would be the last time I saw her.

I sat in the bottom of his sock drawer and twiddled my metaphorical thumbs.  Once, I heard raised voices and the slam of a heavy door.  He came into the room and flicked open my box.  I shone radiantly, and he watched me for a moment before gingerly closing the lid.  He placed me back in his drawer, between his wool hiking socks that had holes in two of the toes. 

On April 16th I was finally removed from my socky prison and taken from my box.  A pink boy named Chester clumsily helped the groom attach me to the silky pillow on which I was to wait.  It was a misty spring afternoon, and I relished the delicate scent of wet flower petals and pollen.  As I peered about, I noticed that guests were mulling happily, drinks in hand, on a lawn!  Where was the church?  I had always dreamed of a proper wedding, a church with marble pillars, and champagne flutes.  Where were the pews, the organs?  What kind of a ring did they think I was?

Chester was a real pest.  He had a soft side for the deviled eggs that had been arranged on the surrounding picnic tables as appetizers.  He was on his fifth when a pin striped fellow wearing a beautiful emerald brooch approached him.  I leaned towards the edge of my pillow, trying to get a better view of the lovely jewel.  It was Sariah!  She had been sold just a month after I arrived, but not before I had fallen madly in love with her.  I needed to talk to her, to see her.  She was looking the other way, staring at the guests absentmindedly.  She was perfect, shiny, radiant.  I needed to get her attention.  I slipped to the end of my pillow, trying to catch her eye, but at the same time, Chester reached for his sixth egg.  His hand dipped low, and I plummeted into a foamy cloud of egg.  From my yolky bed, I heard the gentleman that was wearing Sariah chide the boy for not being in place yet.  The boy muttered something indignantly, but complied, dutifully shuffling off.  The last thing I saw as I was lifted high into the air and swallowed whole was the hand which bore me.  It was cuffed in a sleeve of pink pin stripe.

Dear Mr. President... Final Draft

Dear Mr. Obama,

Tomorrow, when you are sworn in, you will be faced with an intimidating host of problems. However, your work will be more than fixing the slew of issues left for you--you will also have to make new progress, and as you have reminded the U.S. citizens many times over, give us reason for hope. You will begin to create change for the better, which is the very root of hope. Hope doesn't lie in righting the wrongs of the past--it lies in the future, and the opportunities that the future holds. I, personally, want you to focus your efforts on foreign policy, the environment, and gay rights. 

Our last president has left us enemies strewn across the globe. However, with you as president, we are being granted a fresh start. Our last three presidents have been from two different families, and have served multiple terms.  You are the first person to enter the White House free from a legacy,  in over two decades. You are our new chance, our fresh start, our way to show the world that we are done with the conservative, militaristic ways of our last president. We can show other countries that we are ready to coexist peacefully with them. We will no longer play police for the world, using it as our excuse to exploit these countries for monetary gain. We can now focus our efforts on helping those who are actually in need, and are asking for help, such as Darfur. On January 20th, you can take your oath, knowing that you lead a country that has the power to do real good for the world, and not look to gain or profit from others.

The environment is a major problem that we, as a world, face together.  This predicament, concerning pollution and global warming, has been growing over the years.  However, the U.S. has recently been happy to push it to the back burner, as the economy has greatly overshadowed our environmental problems. Of course, the U.S. wasn't helping the should-be worldwide battle against global warming, even before we had, supposedly, greater concerns than our ability to breathe. I want you, as president, to investigate alternative energy sources. Encourage citizens to bike to work, walk to school, to carpool.  Ask the citizens of your country to reuse their grocery bags, recycle as much as they can, and start a compost pile. Declare a certain day each month as conservation day.   Raise awareness about the amount of energy that could be conserved if the light was turned off every time a person walked out of a room. There are so many small measures that can yield great results. 

Lastly, I encourage you to remember the Pledge of Allegiance when you take your oath tomorrow. Help us believe what we say, that we are, "One nation.....with liberty and justice for all." It amazes me that something so basic, a person's right to love and marry who they choose, could be denied in a country that claims to treat every individual with justice. Not once during the pledge have I heard anyone say, that we are, "One nation....with liberty and justice for heterosexuals." However, until we create equality for all, including gay marriage rights, we might as well say that before class every morning. As you restore the economy, and try to gradually end the war in Iraq, don't forget those in your own country who aren't being granted the rights supposedly promised to them.

Thank you for listening. I am sure that you will do amazing things, and I'm excited to be a part of this piece of history.

Sincerely, 

Luna Adler