Vase
I’m bored with most wedding keepsakes. I have “won” the centrepiece at more than two wedding and my life showed no noticeable improvement. Oh, you were gonna toss it anyway, but my birthday falls next in the calendar? Charmed.
And what could be worse than that stupid bag of inedible candy nuts you get at Italian weddings? Nothing says “Congratulations Salvatore and Jeanette” and “we hate your teeth” better than a silken mesh scrotum stuffed with ivory pebbles.
So anyway, even though my friends who got married this summer didn’t have centrepieces (it was a lovely cocktail reception with no tables), I managed to snag this vase. Was I meant to have this? Did I steal it? How did I get it? I have as many questions as there are shards of reflective glass on this small vase’s surface.
Actually, though the picture doesn’t bear it out: that glass is the vase’s surface. A gentle spin under incandescent light reveals how it’s really hundreds of clear fragments coalescing to resemble the shape of something grander—and equally fragile. A pretty apt metaphor for marriage if you ask me.
(Or the causes leading up to World War II. Just saying.)
Congratulations friends!