The Courthouse We Didn't Enter

I scrolled past her announcement today.

Her smile arranged for witnesses.

The kind that requires a display—

the dress, the flowers, the processes

of becoming official in a room

full of people who came to prove

you meant it. To document the bloom

of something you decided to approve.

I had an appointment once.

A Tuesday. We drove to the courthouse

to sign the papers. But the call came through—

blood work, my name, the certain house

of bad news. We turned around

before we went inside. We were bound

by accident instead. By biology.

By hospital lights and his apology

when he couldn't stop me from screaming.

Now I watch her photo shine.

I don't regret my different sign—

the body's ceremony. The unplanned thing

that made us real without the ring

on my finger first. We married

by necessity. By the way he carried

our daughter into the world while I bled

through it all. That's what it means to wed.

Not in a room full of people looking.

Just the two of us. Just the booking

of the body. Just the becoming

of someone new in the humming

dark of a hospital room at three a.m.

No white dress. No ceremony.

Just the proof. Just the memory.

Just the fact that we already knew then.