I made dinner for myself and it was good, it was beautiful, it tasted and looked right. Someone should wife me up. I'd make such a great wife.

It took me a whole winter squash pancake to realize I had been someone's wife. Had been wifed. Up? Why was that where I went? Wifed or un, isn't the next step mommy? Someone should mom me up.

But I didn't want that, just as I never wanted to be a wife, either. Paramour, sure, but real life would never abide such lengths of black lace. Inamorata, more like vampire. In fact more like unicorn, in fact more like bat. Strung, netted. Wily octopus, big-eyed squid, to be cephalopod, I was always so cuttly.

After dinner there was dessert, and whiskey I drank straight from the bottle to wash me out. I did not do the dishes, not for four days, drank only coffee and no water, bathed only when the crotch of my underwear took on the pale misery of mayonnaise, only then, with the words panties and archival dry-cleaning worn away with the undersea memory of hugging that white dress heavier than I was and crying and crying, not wanting to never wear it again, the C-grade pornography and the last cunnilingus, the river cruise and the funny hats, all of it smudged off of me, wiped up.