The Wedding Gown by Jackie Pugh Kogan

I return the gown to Panache, and, empty bag in hand, reach the door, brush off a tear. The windows frame a rain-slick street, gutters flooding.

Were his words slick as assaulted streets? Or do I need to turn the glass to my own expectation. I long for a window through which to see truth framed. The Iraqui desert is made of glass, they say; flooding the mouth, sand tears all the way down.

And the empty bag? A strip of torn underskirt is imprisoned in a grommet. My eyes flood. I should tell them perhaps the gown is flawed.

© Copyright 2016 Jackie Pugh Kogan. All rights reserved.
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Jackie Pugh Kogan is a Los Angeles based writer working primarily in gothic fiction of the American West. Publications include short stories in ROAR, Dream International Quarterly, The Northridge Review, and poetry in Crazy Woman Creek: Women Rewrite the American West (Houghton Mifflin, 2004).