Jason J. Marchi  . . .

Amazing Stories

March 1991

  BACK TO main page

My vows went unsaid, for she is dead.

Her ring in still in my hand,

her fingers blind with the worms of the earth.

Each night I wake from my bed,

from a dream where I've said,

"With this ring . . ."

but I wake to the sweat and an empty bed.

In these dreams I have danced with the dead

but I scream and I scream

and my vows go unsaid

"With this ring I . . ."

Each midnight, each noon

I am endlessly consumed

with the look in her eyes

when I proposed and she cried

-- and oh how I cried!

when the Devil in a car came

and snatched her to the tomb.

Took away her warm hand

before I could slip on the band

and say, "With this ring I thee . . ."

I will not be kept from my love,

my mate and my match.

So as she slept in her tomb

I called forth the procession

and had her exhumed

before friends and fiends

under the light of the moon.

Oh, God! with her love I am so consumed

I had her exhumed

from the dark, dank and dreadful

cold concrete tomb.

And now she lies calmly

in the coffin raised up,

my fingers fitting the gold band

onto her hard and cold hand.

Forever she sleeps in her bridal gown,

surrounded by satin in a virgin bed,

in the midnight graveyard,

with a minister of the dead

nodding an smiling

with the book in his hands,

our marriage complete before God,

before Devil,

as I recite after him:

"With this ring I thee wed!"

Copyright © 1988-2004 by Jason J. Marchi. All Rights Reserved. No portion of the text of these pages may be reprinted or stored in any form whatsoever without the express written permission of the copyright holder, except when quoted briefly for purposes of review.