The bride awaits in a room with a horse-
drawn ambulance idling in her chest—
her dowry an empire of snowed-over
backstreets. No sidewalks salted; no plows
dredging their residual black glass-
phalt demilunes. The sawing sound comes
from above not below—it’s the groom drawing
a tune from a bow’s warp & halving, the bride’s
wet dress & the bride: eyelets & yes-
lets, exposed neck & hands: post flammable.
The ambulance a tindering stalled. A cure-all.
Inside the plastic bags of funereal flora the cut
stems exhale the walls to condensation, like too-much
kissing in a fastened car: a breathpattern:
the fingerdrawn heart & its banal arrow-
pierce. But I am forgetting to pronounce the bride
still aflame—the yartzeit undoused inside her
ash-lassoed mouth. I am forgetting
to define that I’m still the bride—
the shock always a palpable suitor;
my own little defibrillator.