She danced her way across the room in a slow funeral waltz, her skin as white as snow, her eyes rimmed in black, her lips the color of a bruise. Her hair was white as icicles, her face younger than morning. She wore an innocent cotton night gown, stockings and garters, all purest white. Her fingers circled a small white candle, around her neck a white cross hung from a white chain.
She stopped in front of me, just as I'd prayed she would, and in that moment all sound and motion stopped. We faced each other on a bare stage under pumpkin colored firelight and she stood before me in first position, holding the candle to her breast.
She reached up and touched the Om that hangs on a silver chain around my neck, and I noticed there was something else on the chain too. I ran my fingers over a small sliver of flint and a piece of steel, hanging on that same chain. She leaned closer to me, holding the candle between us like a shield, and mouthed the word, "Please?"
I didn't even stop to think, I just undid the chain from around my neck for the first time in more than a decade, and struck the flint and steel above the wick of the candle she held. The spark kissed the wick and a flame was born, and the corners of her mouth turned up in the happiest smile I'd seen in a lifetime. She held the burning candle in her left hand, and her right hand twined around my left and we both squeezed like we never wanted to let go.
And we turned and walked back down the aisle, back into the lives that are our own and nobody else's, and we couldn't help but laugh as we kissed.
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