Happy Anniversary. by David M. Taylor

I once went to a wedding

where the bride married a man

who looked like Michael Bolton.

During the reception I grew drunk

and tired of their dancing bodies,

how their platitudes laid prone

in the half-empty banquet room.

I stole two bottles of wine

and snuck into the reception upstairs,

where people laughed

and the bride’s uncle spoke about marriage.

He said time forces itself

on the body and mind,

that those we love grow old and die,

but our job is to love them in the meantime.

I held his words in my pocket

before paying a dollar for a dance.

I haven’t thought about them in years

and wonder if they still hold his advice

like I hold on you,

before time eats away at our youth.

David M. Taylor teaches at a community college in St. Louis, MO. His work has appeared in various magazines such as Albany Poets, Misfit Magazine, Rat's Ass Review, and Trailer Park Quarterly. He was also a finalist for the 2017 Annie Menebroker Poetry Award and has four poetry chapbooks, the most recent of which is Growing up Black.