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.