LOIS PETERSON’S work has been published online at Electica, In Posse Review, Southern Ocean Review, and The Paumanok Review, as well as in a range of print publications.  She is a creative writing instructor in Surrey, British Columbia, and the editor/publisher of the new print literary journal Words.

                                                     wedding with a view


Mara knows that firm ground underfoot is sometimes just a hair’s breadth from a certain fall. So she keeps well back from the edge, while her eyes cling to the view.

The bride and groom are both in cream. The suit was not his idea, he’d told Mara earlier, when she arrived at wedding site. “I’m taking it back tomorrow.  Should be good for a full refund.” He was grinning as she stepped into the circle of his arms in which he held her with such welcome. When she moved back again to look up to his face, brushing her cheek against his chest, absorbing the scent of previous wearers, of weddings and parties and meetings gone well or awry, she noticed her embrace had crushed the orchid in his lapel.      

Years ago, when her blood ran even faster in his presence, he’d taken her to another park, along a trail where trees met above their heads like a jungle canopy. It had been her birthday and it was raining.

“Close your eyes and turn away,” he told her.  She complied, and heard him move through leaves, over fallen twigs, across the damp earth. Then, “You can look now” he said, and she lowered her hands from her face, then opened her eyes.  And she’d seen all around her the glow and flicker of a dozen sparklers he’d planted in the dark forest for her.

“You can close your eyes and turn away,” she reminds herself now as the guests gather closer. The bride and groom clasp hands. The minister raises his book to his chest, the pages spread in his hands like wings.  Instead of heeding her own advice, taking comfort in the small protection it offers, Mara straightens her back and forces her gaze forward, sure witness to the event.

“You can look now,” she thinks, and finds the courage to watch a man who is no longer her own love, pledge his life to a thin women with an armful of bracelets that clang like loose change.

There’s quiet applause when it’s over, and the guests gather closer still and smile and congratulate the happy couple.

Mara steps away from them, and aside, and approaches the lip of the earth from which a panoramic view flies like a scarf in the wind. Across a wide expanse of sky lies another moutainside, furred with trees, scarred in places where jagged rocks break through. Long ago she had watched a TV program about hangliders who had thrown themselves off the southern Californian cliffs, to be scooped up by the air and cradled there. And she’d seen one, not graced with such favor, slam back into the cliff face, and drop hundred of yards to lie in a crumpled heap at the bottom.

Still afraid of falling, Mara turns from the view and walks towards her car.     

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Copyright © 2002 Lois J. Peterson