Snide – Ava Patel

Snide

I hear ‘I do’ and choose to roll amid some confetti filled gold balloons,
the confetti pieces smaller than I remember in the gold balloons.

Something will go whoosh past my ear soon,
maybe the helium let out of a small, gold balloon.

I see nothing at this wedding but hear badgers humming the truly madly deeply tune.
My mother and I had no one to dance with because soon

we’d be left alone with the empty bar, the two of us all on our own.
My gnarled fingers promised to always be alone,

even in her slightly less gnarled ones—
the whale fell through into our fourth moon.

Wrecking ball, helium wrecking balloons
wrecking wedding cakes, I am the ruins.

The snide rabbit mutters, his voice high from confetti filled gold balloons.
‘Always the bridesmaid,’ he says. ‘I’m never the groom.’

…

Ava Patel graduated from the University of Warwick with a First in an MA in Writing.  Her debut pamphlet ‘Dusk in Bloom’ has just been published by Prolebooks and she runs an Instagram poetry page: @ava_poetics.Her pamphlet is available to buy here: https://prolebooks.co.uk/