My Friend Had A Church Wedding

My friend had a church wedding:
we were late and came in just before it began.
I had brought a girl I was dating, and
we had come with a friend of mine and his wife.
The groom had known us for years, he had
attended both our weddings, only mine
had ended in failure.
We settled in just before
they walked down the aisle
together,
I'd never seen this done in a wedding before
but I wish I did,
no one was giving the bride away,
the bride and the groom were adults
and they were walking down the aisle
together to finish what they had started together.

They had the same smile,
brilliant in the stained glass light.

I thought about the years he'd
watched my friend and I get married,
have children, build lives together,
wondering when his chance would come.
Later he was taking pictures with his new bride
while my friend and his wife and my date and I
were drinking, we were standing at a table as close as
possible to where the waiters were leaving the kitchen
with trays of hors d'oeuvre
and my date and I were telling various comic dating stories
and I warned my friend and his wife:
be good to each other. It's a
jungle out there.

What I didn't tell them was what I didn't tell
my date:
that sometimes you hold onto things
that aren't working
because you don't want to admit that
you're alone.