I am holding four hundred and eleven people in one room, which is more than I usually gather in a single place, and every one of them is holding something back.
The two at the front are the lightest. I know this weight; I have carried both of them since their first day of breath, and today they stand very straight, as if being sure of something makes a body less. It does not. They weigh exactly what they always have. But they are leaning, very slightly, toward each other, the way two poles lean when one has decided to trust the other not to move.
I hold the cake, three tiers, each one pressing honestly on the one below. I hold the rings in a small box, then in the air for one frightening second, then on hands. I hold the champagne in raised glasses at the precise wrong angle, and I hold the little spill it makes.
The one giving the speech says the couple is "carrying so much love it's overwhelming." I checked. Love registered nothing. Zero. And yet her hand shook, and her chin dropped, and I felt her whole frame bow toward the floor under something I could not weigh. This happens all night. They keep bending under joys and sorrows I cannot find, and I keep waiting to feel the mass that moves them so, and I never do.
Later they dance, which is only falling that keeps changing its mind, and each catch is mine. The old ones sit and let their full weight down at last, into chairs, into each other's shoulders.
They will drive home certain the day held them.
It was me. It is always me.
I do not let go.