YRKB
07-12-2011, 06:24 PM
David hopes to catch his bride's eye through chinks in the reception hall's rolling crowd.
There are just snatches of her animated side profile - and that solid pearl smile - a little obscured by white Tulle.
He wants to hold grab her hand and hide in the quiet, damp bottom half of the grand building. He's exhausted. Every couple of minutes he seems to be snatched from the ground and hoisted on another set of broad shoulders, so the close crowd can raise their glasses, cheer and cackle up at him.
Finally she turns to scan the room, and breaks another bright smile when their eyes lock. Just then his brother, half-drunk, initiates another air lift, and from his distance David treads the high space, manically, above her.
She is laughing, and clapping with it too - and his irritation, the furrowed features drawn together from the surprise of the action, spread out to a weakly creased grin of resignation. He chuckles, and then they are both heady with laughter along with the others - the music seems to get a little louder, a cork pops in a corner somewhere -
And his brother teeters. Staggers - and swerves, in a way that rips the open smile from David's face, before they both smash through a table.
There is the endless cacophony of smashing glass and overturned chairs. The leaden force of his impact. Some screams - wailing questions.
The quiet black.
***
She pushes him to their small green vehicle in the wheelchair, rattling across the hospital car park. He's quiet, squinting against the luminosity radiating from a pale, overcast sky.
They stop at the car's side. His friend Dan says something David doesn't hear, and doesn't want repeated - and so there is a pause before the wide and heavy-breathing figure begins to coddle him, and grope for leverage under his back to lift him from his seat.
David closes his eyes, so he doesn't see his useless legs swing.
They settle him.
In the car, he meets his wife eyes in the rear view. The silence indicates she's smiling, but it does not reach the eyes observing him.
Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown
There are just snatches of her animated side profile - and that solid pearl smile - a little obscured by white Tulle.
He wants to hold grab her hand and hide in the quiet, damp bottom half of the grand building. He's exhausted. Every couple of minutes he seems to be snatched from the ground and hoisted on another set of broad shoulders, so the close crowd can raise their glasses, cheer and cackle up at him.
Finally she turns to scan the room, and breaks another bright smile when their eyes lock. Just then his brother, half-drunk, initiates another air lift, and from his distance David treads the high space, manically, above her.
She is laughing, and clapping with it too - and his irritation, the furrowed features drawn together from the surprise of the action, spread out to a weakly creased grin of resignation. He chuckles, and then they are both heady with laughter along with the others - the music seems to get a little louder, a cork pops in a corner somewhere -
And his brother teeters. Staggers - and swerves, in a way that rips the open smile from David's face, before they both smash through a table.
There is the endless cacophony of smashing glass and overturned chairs. The leaden force of his impact. Some screams - wailing questions.
The quiet black.
***
She pushes him to their small green vehicle in the wheelchair, rattling across the hospital car park. He's quiet, squinting against the luminosity radiating from a pale, overcast sky.
They stop at the car's side. His friend Dan says something David doesn't hear, and doesn't want repeated - and so there is a pause before the wide and heavy-breathing figure begins to coddle him, and grope for leverage under his back to lift him from his seat.
David closes his eyes, so he doesn't see his useless legs swing.
They settle him.
In the car, he meets his wife eyes in the rear view. The silence indicates she's smiling, but it does not reach the eyes observing him.
Copyright Yafeu-Khamisi Rodway-Brown