somewhere....
down a long hallway....
affixed to another hall...
then a corridor leading down....
the bride was pacing in a small dark room....
and she had been pacing the room for thirteen years and one day......

there was
an old drainage pipe...
in the room's southwest corner........
that somehow connected to another room further down the hall...
and through a hole in that pipe she had been speaking to another....
who had been locked in a cage for ten years and one full day......................

the telephone-hollow sound
made edeana's voice sound like a machine....
as they conversated on lost things, the fabric of reality and the dark thoughts.....
it was then that edeana said something to the bride that seemed to light her mind on fire.....
"what if," edeana began, "your groom is never coming, dear?...it just seems after all this time, that your groom is never going to arrive and you have been forgotten in this god-forsaken oubliette....here you stand, pining for someone who has long since moved beyond you. i am locked within a cage and cannot leave till someone frees me...but you could have walked out of here years ago....but here you are......pacing a barren waiting room for thirteen long years and one day."

the bride
grabbed for her own head,
pressing her hands over her ears to scream....
for the simplicity of it was a dagger inside her mind.....
it had never even occured to her that leaving the room was even an option...
never occured to her that he would never come.....that he was never coming for her....
and she had been wasting her life away for the past thirteen years and one day......