Content note Mentions heartbreak and family pressure.
I returned the ring in the same red box it came in,
as if it had only been on loan, which I suppose it was.
The hall was cancelled with one phone call.
The caterer was kind. He said this happens more than people think.
He said it like a doctor says you’ll be fine.
My aunts arrived in shifts, like weather systems.
Some brought sympathy. Some brought suggestions.
One brought the name of a man who is very good with computers.
For weeks I could not walk past the bridal shop on our road.
I took the long way, past the bus depot and the tea stall,
and learned the names of three new stray cats.
I kept finding him in small places:
his handwriting on a grocery list,
a song he hummed playing in a taxi,
a dent in the car door from the night he parked badly
and we laughed so hard we forgot to be careful.
My mother said: better now than later.
My father said nothing, but bought my favourite sweets every day for a month.
The future I had planned was a house with a blue door.
I had chosen the curtains. I had named the children.
It is strange to grieve a place you never lived in.
Now it is spring. I have cut my hair short.
I have enrolled in the course I postponed for him.
I walked past the bridal shop yesterday without noticing —
only realised later, at the tea stall,
feeding the three cats, laughing at something,
that I had not taken the long way home.
