A Marriage

Carla Zanoni

A Marriage

Never go to bed angry.

Go to bed angry, but passionately kiss before you sleep.

Forgive freely.

Wake up every day choosing to be together.

And don’t forget, a comfortable, wide bed can get you through anything.

Marry your best friend, but don’t forget your best friends.

You are here to support, not to parent.

Love yourself first, then loving each other will come easily.

Empathy. Patience. Partnership. Individualism.

All in equal measure.

This is the wisdom we pass down wedding to wedding, love to love, but there is only one truth.

Together, you will build your own palace, golden columns and gilded gargoyles protecting from the outside forces. Gaze up. Over the open doorways is a thatched roof of rushes, heather, and palm branch, inside a courtyard with rust-colored mud where the sun has baked it hard like rock, impenetrable yet raw. Only you two will understand this patchwork of support structures, its labyrinth of passages that lead to grand fields of ripe sweet citrus meant only for your lips.

Hold each other in each other’s hands as you would a bunch of flowers, bright and intoxicating, fragile and impermanent.

Pierce the veil between this life and the next with gentle light and profound resonance.

This is what I wish for you, a love that has no words, a brilliant quiver filled with arrows and strong backs to draw and release the bow.

In other words, I hope for you a slow and ordinary life filled with the love you require.

May this marriage be blessed.