A Spoon-River Eulogy

After an idea by popartagenda

I had wanted the bonnet in the picture so badly, to contrast, no,
to contradict Harold's insistence on the fake roman pillars and the urn.
When I was a girl I dreamed about getting married in the little white chapel
by the Lindbacka meadow in Småland, completely out of the question now of course,
this being Illinois and Harold.

He was fastening his cravat at that moment, preparing himself to enter
our wedding picture, and I wasn't exactly looking at him when the photographer
caught me off guard in my lonesome, but my eyes were caught in the prisms
of the chandelier above Harold's head.





The same chandelier that made me fixed on the idea that I shall forever be an immigrant.

Even a hundred and twenty years from now I shall find myself on this foreign continent,
perhaps attached by love rather than the urge for bread. I shall have chubby ankles
rather than the ones I now have to hide to my dismay, and both bride and groom shall be dressed in denim
and without much ceremony put our signatures on a piece of paper.

Much will be different, but not the chandelier, my yearning for fresh lingonberry jam
and my wondering if any man would ever travel the seas for me.