“previews of marriage”

[an audience sits in a movie theater of only front rows;
flat screens are aligned at brief angles near each other-
inches of space between them.]

an actor and actress trek through and through a grassy field,
the actor’s tuxedoed self walking five feet in front of his fiancée,
her veiled self lifting her wedding dress over the grassy field.

the audience's lids are heavy enough to collapse with dreams of knives,
oh, murderous lives.
and,

as if abiding by their wishes,
a stream of boiled blood pours over the screens,
pushes her and her wedded dues into a spiderwebbed cauldron,
her fiancé watching with a new sense of awe, a glinting glee rushing over his face.

a sticky brew lifted by iron-crafted spatulas smears over her newly-curled hair,
but her expression remains ignorant to the acidic effect.

her cramped fingers gag her neck into a noose,
though her fiancé’s hands undo that quicker, quieter leeway to death
because his fire is only half prepared.

he slips onto a more-or-less conscious stage,
bows to the audience when they scream 'nay' to his performance;

taking all reactions as encores,
he rips the curtains open to the scene of a burning stage,
his fiancée gagged with a bandana,
screaming 'i do' through the fabric.

placing his grip on her wrist, he pulls her up and matches lips with wits,
hovering above and placing rings on their respective ring fingers
while he mumbles, ‘I do’ through her veil,
letting the fire from the cauldron catch flame to her white dress,
letting it eat away at her flesh like candlewax as she tries to run to his side,
though he let the binds of their long-lived lives together fray
until they disappeared into a tiny pile of ashes.

he struts away, cocking his head to the side to watch his wife fall to her knees-
her dress burns from top to bottom.

he leaves in a murmur of ‘death did us part’
as the screens fade to black;
the audience rushes in a rabble to the neon-lit green exit signs
as a burning dress tail trails the performance,
climbing out of the credits screen.

her skeleton-face smiles as she holds out her hand,
flashes her ring to the audience’s backs,
demanding death never end a performance or proposal.

-Kim Ooley