Narrative Poem: Wedding Day – Rahil Najafabadi

Rahil Najafabadi is majoring in English, with a concentration in Technical and Professional Writing.  She grew up  in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.  This narrative poem was written for Professor Brian Brodeur’s ENG W303, Writing  Poetry, in Fall 2020.  Prof. Brodeur writes “Rahil’s poems are exceptionally original. She continues  to develop a voice that sounds at once mysterious yet strangely intimate in poems that dismantle received notions about gender, geography, and myth.” 

Wedding Day
Our shell-fold wedding cards were bent and creased—
no iron could smooth those tangled hearts.
Hands tied together forming a stopper knot,
teeth faintly clicking with a nervous kiss,
the moonlight ascending from crescent to disk.
The knot straining and magnetizing our figures
that are twisted together into the softest pretzel.
The salt of our skin sprinkling to the dance floor.
Then cutting the wedding cake and your sharp black tie
touching the table beneath and slashing it in two.
The Tiffany chairs gave up on gravity and flew,
I threw the white roses, and the thorns sliced the best
man’s throat, gushing like a jelly donut.
I collided into your bones like a marble-cake,
your black suit bled into my white dress.