We are gathered here tonight
You wear your wedding dress to bed, the happiest day
until he didn’t show. We thought he was dead but
he was driving to the coast, still in love with the idea
of being in love but fallen out of love with being in love
and I am wearing an American football shirt and denim
shorts and my dark green Doctor Martens to signify my
mid-life crisis, the years go by in a police car doing
a hundred while I’m the hitchhiker stuck on a slip road
so we play the game called let’s pretend he really died
and we’re at his headstone in the rain with dripping flowers,
I tell you how he loved you so much and is with you
every second and you say aye and you put on your veil
and the policeman was shot in a robbery and is still
in intensive care and the vicar committed adultery
and your maid of honour has Lyme disease so things
haven’t worked out too badly for us considering.
When dawn comes we drive to McDonalds and marvel
at the plastic mangled language. This is what love is.