I See the Future at My Wedding to the Tomato from VeggieTales

by Matthew Mastricova

We met at a flag football game. Our sons’ teams were locking horns, and as he screamed at his progeny I remembered his voice. He was thrilled to be recognized—after decades, without the music or the stories, still just as vibrant, as round—and I kept recognizing him in town until we had both left our wives and sons. He insisted on Vegas, everywhere he looked in our town he felt the judgment of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. He needed a fresh start. I get it, I told him, I was raised Catholic, and he gave me a look like “that’s not even a real religion” and I almost left him. He tried to make it up to me by getting Harry Styles to officiate, but the best he could do was Garfield dressed as a sexy maid. I forgave him. For his vows, he reads a Long Poem about the Myth of the Heterosexual White Cowboy and the feeling of a rosary as you pass your fingers across two mysteries. He preaches about the beauty of men fucking bareback in the desert heat until each word sounds like the ghost of the word before and the only reason he stops is because I kiss him. I put my mouth against the whole of him and prepare, even now, for a doubtful seed or drop of acid, but only taste the sweat-chilled and sweetly bland end of the rest of our lives.

Matthew Mastricova is the fiction editor for Third Point Press. Their work has appeared in Catapult, Joyland, Redivider, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere.