by Cath Barton

I wake with a taste of salt in my mouth and a gritty feeling between my toes. And screw up my eyes as the birds sing a fanfare.

My dress is buttercup-yellow, the hem scalloped. I have no hat. No hat could be as beautiful as the one my mother made for me when I was ten, layered with organza, satin and love. And now, when I need her to pin flowers in my hair, she is not here.

Only yesterday, we rolled like pups, me and a man I am not going to marry today. He pushed my hair back with wet hands, threading it with seaweed, kissing salt into my mouth.

The man I am not marrying will be at the beach again today. Elsewhere.

I make myself tidy. My mother would have approved. When I open the door the sun is glittering through the leaves of the linden trees. There has been a shower of rain, short and violent; the road glistens in the aftermath.

People cheer as we come out the church. A golden couple, a woman says. Someone throws yellow rose petals and I brush them from my husband’s collar.

I look into the sun and think, just for a moment, about sand and salt and the man I might have married, in another life.

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Cath Barton’s debut novella, The Plankton Collector, is published by New Welsh Review under their Rarebyte imprint. She has new flashes in The Cabinet of Heed and Ink In Thirds.