RSVP Ignored

I can imagine their wedding dance. My mom in her starched, 


lacey-white, matrimonial cowboy hat and my dad keeping


a beat with only the occasional squat and sway of his 
gray,

tuxed hips. And while they maybe two-stepped to a little 
John Denver,

a corsaged Aunt Kathy held post at 
the guestbook - the one with the

enormous plumed pen that 
ran out of ink somewhere between

Great Uncle Leonard and a 
surname of Lundgren.

Did someone scratch my name 
down in those gray, embossed pages?

I was there, too. I was there humming along to “Country Roads”

and feeling 
the waltzing chafe of Grandpa Shermer’s midsection

as he 
shuffled through a dollar’s worth of dance.

Between twirls 
and dips on chipped, church linoleum and

niceties with the 
horn-rimmed organist, I, too blushed at the

joke repertoire coming from 
Uncle George and

other schnockered uncles circling 
near the cake. Preludes of

“a guy walks into a bar” and 
“one man says to another man”

were met with slaps on suited knees, a swallow of Grain Belt and

bites of marble cake smothered 
in white-ish frosting.

And with each punch line, I made myself more at home in the first trimester. 



I hope Mom sipped a Grain Belt that night.


I hope her dress was cinched tight around her waist.


I hope that they had no idea I was there, hiding 


somewhere between her bladder and spleen, already


developing a taste for dancing around in dresses.