Marriage is a Man-Made Lake

We learn that the lake we love to hike around was man-made. Still, turtles sun themselves on logs that fell in at some point. Still, a lake; still waters also animate. In the mean time, we can make anything mean. At the trailhead, I told you: I’ll love anything but a snake. We make the loop, reach the beginning, you take my hand gently and say: Hey, it’s okay, but look: there’s a little black snake, there. And I greet her as she clears our path. We’re getting married. Tonight, we fry up potatoes to spruce up leftovers. Only one match left and we use one candlestick to light the other. Did you notice how our worries became our wonder? How our dread loops around toward delight? How the end calls out to the means.

Lauren Turner is a writer and musician (Lou Turner) in Nashville, TN. She is the author of Shape Note Singing, forthcoming from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in 2021. Her poetry, essays, and interviews have appeared in Image Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, Chapter 16, and more. She serves as a blog editor for the freeform community radio station WXNA FM in Nashville, where she hosts her literary program, The Crack In Everything. Her recent album Songs for John Venn (SPINSTER) was called 'winsome' and 'quietly imaginative' by NPR Music.