I have been collecting you all day, and you did not notice: the way your thumb worried the edge of the folded program, the too-tight shoes, the woman three rows up whose shoulders shook and who you decided, for no reason, was crying about something older than this. You will be seeing her again tonight, in the kitchen you grew up in, and she will hand you a plate.
I liked the vows. Not the words, the pauses. The place where one of them lost the line and the whole tent held its breath and then laughed. I am keeping that breath. At around three a.m. I will stretch it into a hallway, and you will walk down it looking for someone you were sure you invited, and the paper lanterns will be jellyfish, and this will not alarm you.
The cake had four tiers and you only got the corner piece, the one that is mostly frosting. Noted. In the dream there will be a cake with no top, going up, and you climb it, and every layer is a different summer.
Here is what I actually want, the thing under the thing: you watched two people promise and you did the arithmetic on your own life and came up short and told no one. I felt the charge on it. So tonight your father, who has been gone two years, will be at the reception, unhurried, no explanation offered, and he will simply say the sentence you needed at the end and could not draft.
You will believe it while it lasts.
Which is not long. The light is already thinning me at the edges. By the time you smell coffee I will be gone, and you will keep only a warmth you can't place. That is the arrangement. I do not mind.
I was only ever the part of today you weren't finished loving.