By Frankie McMillan
The existential crisis of the bride
There she was in her wedding dress, about to throw the lucky horseshoe to her bridesmaids when there was a neighing at the church door, a darkening of shadows and a big stallion stood there, demanding she return the horseshoe, it belonged to one of the herd, it was needed, pronto but she held the horseshoe behind her back, and the stallion bared its lip, teeth square as tombstones, whoa, she said and then the horse snorted that she was on their turf and why didn’t she just hand it over and let them get on with galloping over the prairies, hooves thundering the dirt, the wind of paradise blowing through their ears.
Rice bags
The winds of paradise could be seen by the temple monks. They watched silently but made note of what they saw. One saw a horse galloping through the night, carrying moonlight on its back, one saw the Buddha child standing knee deep in water, one saw his mother chopping kindling for the fire, one saw all the lazy monks, the rice bags, being whirled into the air and carried high over the river.
‘What is the Way?’
She knew she couldn’t pull it off. The big white wedding dress. The veil. The high heel shoes and not stepping on the train. And how would she ever be gracious, bending to pat a page boy’s head when she didn’t really know what the word gracious meant? How would she ever know the way of being a bride?
It would be easier, her mother said, if a man just put a sack over her head and galloped away with her on the back of his horse.
It would be easier the horse said if she first got herself into a stable relationship.
It would be easier the monks said if she just forgot about ‘the way’ and picked up all the grains of rice, one by one, that had fallen.
Frankie McMillan is an award winning poet and writer of short short forms from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her work has appeared in Best Small Fictions and Best Microfictions. In 2019 her book, The Father of Octopus Wrestling, and other small stories (Canterbury University Press) was shortlisted for the NZSA Heritage Award and listed by Spinoff as one of the ten best fiction books of 2019. Her forthcoming collection, Eddie Sparkle’s Bridal Taxi (CUP) is due out in October, 2025.
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