the corpse bride

on the pain of generational trauma

I saw a dead bride in the woods at 13.

A shape between twin trees, a trick of light on old bark, she was wretched like an unholy shrine. Her pale face was white as bone and her eyes were black like bitter coffee. The dusty rose on her cheekbones was artificial like cheap rouges. She was as beautiful as the topaz moon caught in winter branches and as sorrowful as a house after the mourners have left. I could've held her like a blue baby in my jittery arms, or I could've rested my head on her crooked shoulder and cry against her skin.

Mine was the dead bride they forgot to bury. Fresh rainwater gathered in the hollow of her throat and birds pecked her to suck it out. Her embroidered red dress had turned black as burnt coal at the hems. The garland of plump flowers woven into her hair had become brittle nests. She stirs something grave in the cavity within my ribs, she's still waiting for her life to begin. Even in this destitute life after death, she's waiting for her dreams to take shape. I don't know if i should pity her or blame her for pushing me to my lowest.

When I see her, i stoop to her level and I straighten the veil from her face, tuck her dry hair behind her ear, and ask why she left me with all this fear of being difficult, the tiring habit of apologizing, the hunger that is cursed to never be satisfied. But dead brides rarely do answer.

The gold, for which her father's house was sold, spirals around her throat, in little moons of resentment. Dainty lace sleeves unravel into cobwebs around her emaciated arms. Every year another piece of her withers away, and yet the room she occupies grows larger.

The dead bride is a house of her own, growing like moss does. The world itself emerges from her navel. Every leaf I crush beneath my feet rustles like wedding silk. Every love I have ever touched has smelled faintly of her funeral flowers. And the longer you sit next to her, the more difficult it becomes to determine whether you are looking at a mirror or only at your mother from the other side of the bed.

Sometimes, when I dare enough, I climb into the pyre beside her and pretend I am the daughter she always wanted. Sometimes I become the mother she needed to save herself. We hold each other there in the dark, two parasites performing an act of tenderness neither of us learned well enough. Her hand reaches out for mine, i remember the count of thin veins visible from her skin.

I pressed my ear to her chest and heard that she carried her mother inside her, and her mother carried another. If I cut her open, I think I would find a procession of virtuous women who destroyed themselves and their daughters.

Beneath her is another bride. Then another. Then another. With silver threaded through the hair, bangles fused to bone, broken teeth clenched, and the same morbid face. They lay under the soil in layers like tree rings.

They could've had it all. She could've been so much more if she were loved. She would've made me so much more if she understood that what she lacked was what i needed. Her voice is loud and poisonous in my ears but it's not as bitter as that of the woman who carried her in the womb. We suffer at each other's expense.

My mother lives inside me like a dead bride.

Mother, am I dead,

or are you, or the woman

who bore you?

xx