We don’t expect the marriage to last, simply by virtue
of the fact that we’re watching the film of it, of them,

the young couple locked in its reels. The reels locked
in their can and found at an estate sale in the suburbs

forty years after the fact. We are strangers. Unrelated
to the bride and groom. Divorced, lovelorn, paralyzed lovers,

We connect in our disconnectedness. We project and supply
our own narration to the whir of the projector: “Knocked up,”

we cackle. “Shot gun,” we shout. She is trapped in her blue dress.
She is a prisoner in peacock blue, we say. She, she, shhhh.

We could be wrong. Because what we can’t see is what was
never recorded: the wedding night where she, our bold bride,

unfurls before his eyes: the first entanglement, a warmth found,
affection inexhaustible as they fall easy into sleep still joined.