Wedding Day, Circa My Mother

By Paola Ferrante

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When she was in white she was a bride, like a bird she was beloved. 
When a bird is in white she learned she was his
dove. A dove who is a mother
can make her own milk, also white in theory
though none of what that milk is made of reflects
any more than any other part; she knows she makes it
through temporary
starvation. She knows in theory
white light is all
light like rainbows, a trick
of reflection
from the rain; she knows
 
rarely can white light reflect on
a nimbostratus cloud. There, air is relatively smooth
but ground visibility is minimal.  There is no rain above rainclouds
because of gravity;
the situation is she should have been dry
in theory
 
she should have wanted the weight
of gravity, a thickening of the belly, picture
it in black and white ultrasound. In a white dress her pictures are in black
and white, not sepia, where black is an absence of light

upstairs in the attic, where black
ink to page could have been.
In black she wanted
to know why
should she lie
like Lilith with his weight
 
when all
he wanted
for her was to grow
down
 
 
why
is black an absence
of light really all
colours mixed

together, forever.  But in white she was a beloved, whether white
was wedding dress or sheet or shroud she was the other
half, who would not slash
half Amazon, half
human.  She was with a man, with human,
a capacity for having
relations.
 
And when she asked why
he never saw the
refraction of light that results

from all the colours
mixed together, how black
could be additive.  His answer

was in black and white.
A wife is not a bird; she does not fly
 
upstairs. She settles
down
or she becomes
a black hole, collapsing in
on herself.
 
Fifty years later
I still feel the gravity
of the situation,
of being here
but not
in 4k, full colour.

---

Paola Ferrante is an emerging writer who majored in creative writing at York University. Her poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Minola Review, Overland, Geometry and Third Point Press. Her poetry has also been shortlisted for Eyewear Publishing LTD's Fortnight Poem Prize, and she was a finalist in the 2017 Fairy Tale Review Awards for poetry. Paola Ferrante resides in Toronto, Canada.