I dream in your arms of things unimagined since childhood. I wear white. Rice sails through the air; doves fly. I dance with my father. He is handsome and young again; his blue eyes match yours. My mother is beautiful in green velvet. You twirl her like my father did once upon a time, when he loved her.

My father passes me to you and we dance, flash bulbs snapping.

In this world I have never been disappointed; I have never cried in bed for days or stood at the edge of a Caribbean cliff over crashing sea, contemplating. I have not shrieked like a mad woman in Los Angeles traffic; I have not awakened frozen with terror at an imaginary dark figure standing over my bed. There was no need for therapy. I live the fairy tale. This day is heaven, and you and I will leave here amid cheers and well-wishes to live out the joy, picture perfect, picture windows and sleek appliances, magically appearing children that need no looking after. You and me, happiness, yes, ever after.

I turn in your arms, and the dream changes. The scene flashes in negative, my skin as white as the dress, the dress as black as your tuxedo. My father is the devil, and he laughs. He slaps you on the back, calls you son. He is proud that I have chosen you, after all my efforts, after everything; he had given up hope, but now he sees victory. I never noticed how much you look like the pictures of him when he was young, Sinatra on a good day, street-sauntering beauty, thinly draped over sharp angels, those ice sky eyes and petal lips.

I dance in widow's black, but I'm no widow. The rice that sails through the air is glowing hot molten lava, and the doves are winged rats that hunger for the throats of our guests.

We'll rush away, music screaming, chauffeur looking over his shoulder for a glimpse of my breasts. You'll bite into my cleavage as I bite into the soft spot at your jugular. Our lips will crash together dripping blood. I'll lift the train of black lace to climb onto you as you touch me in the way that brought us here. You're hard and throbbing and I'm wet and swollen and I must have you inside me right now or I will die. We are here because I've given in the the madness of my body, to the madness of every thread of my background and every supposedly unlearned illness and every avoided indulgence because I must. I must have you, no matter what.

But I will not let tradition win.

You're screaming I love you and I'm screaming come with me and the driver's turning and frantically adjusting the mirrors and careening down the freeway. I scream back that I love you too, and you scream back that you're coming too, and then we're flying through the air and every sensation lasts forever in an exquisite roller coaster crash and burn.

You'll never consume me. No one will ever be able to say of me: "Ah, she finally learned to be a good, old-fashioned girl."