Wedding Toast

I am at a wedding in Iowa. She called to tell me that the orange afterimage from that afternoon five years ago has filled her brain for the first time in years. I don’t have the heart to tell her I am at a wedding in Iowa & that the memory of her sits in the front of my mind each day like a scarecrow in a corn field. It wouldn’t break her heart or anything—nothing would, but I can’t bring myself to tell her that I have stolen her likeness, I have hired a gardener, someone to tend the apricot trees she planted, someone to prune the ashen dust from the perennial flowers that grow in her stead. Each day I pick one, and her hips move through the grocery store, her laugh echoes in a vinyl booth, her hand moves a pawn one square forward. I stick it in the windowsill, right behind my eyelids and slake my thirst on tepid water. None of this would break her heart, of course— nothing would. I don’t tell her about the wedding, the one in Iowa, just in case.