In her home, I think about the future

The dust settles: the floral suit hangs quietly on the back of a chair, the baskets of flowers dry on the table, cards are opened, gifts are catalogued, photographs are shared.

The plates and mugs that shattered in our haste to make plans and get to fittings are put back together with superglue. Perhaps tomorrow we will paint gold over the cracks.

We collected the broken glass and we pressed some of the flowers and when the dust settles, we will use these broken and dying things to make art. And she will hang it on their walls, and he will sit in front of it as he works, and someday, children...

I will tell them the story of the Three Little Pigs, and the years when their mother built her house out of stone while I wandered around the country with my life held together by Scotch Tape. I will speak fondly of the time I spent in her community: of binding a quilt by hand in shifts as one tired out; of twelve hands sewing lace to her white dress minutes before it was time to go; of holding a birch pole decorated with ribbons and crab apple boughs and handing out tissues when the tears came.

And perhaps they will ask about my own house, the one built not from stone and love but from paper and satin and gas station pizza boxes. What stories there?

"I loved to dance," I'll say. "I had almost forgotten, but when I danced at the wedding I remembered. So I duct-taped my little blue car together and drove across the country."

I will tell them about stage lights and the hush that falls over the audience just before the curtain parts. I will tell them about dreams fulfilled and weave my telling with joy.

I will show them all the broken glass, but only when the cracks are filled with gold and filled with flowers-- the splendor of the rainbow and everything that appears as the dust settles, no notion of the storm.