The Bride Wood Duck Whistle

She waits at the altar where the floorboards are dark from old vows and older blood.

Her breath slips out thin and trembling, a high, mourning note like lace dragged through a closed chapel. It doesn’t call for panic. It calls for obedience. A sound meant to be followed down the aisle, not escaped.

The knurled end cuts into your fingers like rings forced on too tight. Cold. Permanent. One breath is the procession. The next seals the union.

Wings turn. Heads bow. What hears her comes willingly, bound by a promise it never meant to keep.

Some calls scatter the living.

This one marries the dead.