medium mirror
“Free-stuff? More like free baggage!” Luna piped up, looking at the discarded wedding memento, a painting inscribed by guests with personal wishes to the newlyweds, now left to the sidewalk free-cycle giveaway wilds (presumably by one of the ex-spouses still residing in the brownstone behind the wrought iron rail on which it leaned).
“Divorce is rough,” I posed.
“Drain the jacuzzi.”
“Jacuzzi’s long empty, Kid.”
“How so?” she asked.
“Well, divorce is different than letting go. This here’s a letting go.”
“Lol free baggage like I said.”
“This effin’ city. Let’s go.”
There are other possible scenarios. I don’t know the truth. Perhaps one spouse passed away. Perhaps they’re still together and decided, on finding a wedding memento while decluttering, that they couldn’t store it, and perhaps it would bring joy to someone else. Perhaps its latest owner wasn’t anyone involved with the wedding. Perhaps one or both of them couldn’t bring themselves to throw it out, and left it to the wind to decide.
For a wedding artifact, that’s a lot of perhapses.
“Do you take this painting to be lawful wedded artwork?”
“Perhaps.”
As I stared at it with Luna, I kept wondering why it was there, on display. To give this away to strangers just seemed wild to me. If it had been mine, and I wanted to get rid of it, I would have dismantled it as much as possible and consigned it to a bin, to then be bagged and sent to the curb, where it would be compacted into the semi-weekly NYSD pick-up destined, perhaps, for the Fresh Kills landfill, or a barge off into the Atlantic coast.
If I really really didn’t want it, maybe burning it would come into play.
The guests signed the matte, so there’s no way to roll that up if you want to store it. You pretty much must get rid of it, save the artwork, if you have no room for it.
Is it collectible? Whose wedding keepsakes, for real, are worth anything to anyone? English royalty, maybe. Elvis. John & Yoko. But IDK, trading in that stuff seems crass, like dealing in poached emotions.
Is it that nothing’s private now? Even IRL?
Which comes around again to whom does this appeal? Maybe if you and your partner share names with the once-newlyweds? Even then, that would be pretty weird on your wall. All those inscriptions on anyone else’s wall may as well have been auto-generated by a wedding wishes generator app.
It was just so curious, to find this as a free stoop offering.
We left it.