The Wedding Dress

I remember selecting chiffon to drape across my sternum. Softness and fluidity to temper the rigorous calculations: Cinderella + parental projections + eminence through commodified forms = love. When I put on the dress that day, I became a collage of temperaments. Like NYC on any given day. And so I walked down the aisle, draped in perfectly white sutured hyperboles. Flaunting innocence as if I didn't know any better. Kind of like an eager tourist mesmerized by all the flashy lights in Times Square, insistent on doing it all, all at once, while not at home.

While I am grateful for retrospect, and the capacity to reimagine any scenario through a simple reconfiguration of ideas and the addition of new words, I also know that retrospect can also happen on wedding days. So today, though I may choose a black leather tie and deep red lipstick as my adornments, today I still choose to wear the wedding dress. The chiffon was just as necessary twenty years ago, as the tie is today. In retrospect, "commitment" is not as threatening as I once thought. There can be some items of clothing that linger and grow more beautifully over time.