The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

by Roshani Chokshi

Some individuals are like portals, the knowing of them makes the world a far vaster place.

Whenever I think of our first meeting, I am reminded that the word “seduction” comes from seducer, to draw aside. But Indigo did not draw me aside so much as she drew aside the world I had always lived in and showed me a way of living a world apart.

Something that turned her kiss into a knife that cut me free from the dark.

In fairy tales, a kiss marks a threshold—between the state of being cursed or cured lies a kiss. But not all kisses cure; some kill. Thresholds go both ways, after all.

“Sometimes I think I had a brother who left me for a different place,” I said, the words clumsy and raw, unused to being uttered aloud. “I’ve been trying to find a way to live in this world. Barring that, I was looking for a way to leave it.”

Indigo did not speak. But our heartbeats shared the same rhythm. It said: Here is the dialect of the living and I am living alongside you. It said: I know this, too, and I can share it with you.

I have since learned that marriage is nothing more than a spell strengthened by daily ritual. The spell requires libations: mundane musings hoarded and pored over, the repetition of small dismays, the knowledge of how your spouse takes their coffee. Marriage asks for that crust of time you were selfishly saving for yourself. Marriage demands blood, for it says: Here is what is inside me, and I tithe it to you.

Pain is inexplicably vital to us. It pins us to the very fabric of our lives, that which joy and comfort and warmth have made alien and foreign. Pain speaks to us in a voice that carries the hallowed certainty of hymns: I know exactly what you deserve, and I shall give it to you.

Without the terror that came from imagining a life without your beloved, there was no urgency in loving them.

I have never before considered what it means to have a good marriage. I thought it was finding intriguing and attractive company. But maybe it is about finding someone whose heart is like a mirror, whose love can make you stand the sight of yourself.