The Lovely Harry and I are wedding guests at a Married At First Sight wedding

by Paula Harris

The bride and groom giggle and read their overly hopeful vows.

I’m wearing a fabulous hat.

I say I’m not a psychologist, Harry, but I don’t think this marriage is going to last.

Harry nods. Harry says I’m a bad psychologist, and I think you’re right.

Harry is dressed in black.

Harry says And what did you want to talk about, Paula?

I say I know that you’re not comfortable with being the only person in my life, Harry. I know because you’ve told me to go out and make friends heaps of times. And I’ve ignored you. Because friends have just become a depressing and exhausting cycle of having to try to find someone I get along with and then become friends and then trust them and then it all goes to shit and I feel stupid for trusting them, and then repeat. There’s no stability across my life with a friend or two who’ve lasted. It’s always starting again from scratch. It’s always starting again from scratch and knowing that it won’t last. And really, Harry, why would I find anything to motivate me to do that, to continually have to start from scratch, again and again, for the next forty years?

The bride and groom giggle and kiss. Harry and I dab fake tears from our eyes.

Paula Harris lives in Aotearoa/New Zealand, where she writes and sleeps in a lot, because that's what depression makes you do. She won the 2018 Janet B. McCabe Poetry Prize and the 2017 Lilian Ida Smith Award. Her writing has been published in various journals, including Berfrois, Queen Mob's Teahouse, The Rialto, Barren, SWWIM, Diode, Glass, Aotearotica, The Spinoff, and Landfall. She is extremely fond of dark chocolate, shoes, and hoarding fabric. She can be found at http://paulaharris.co.nz/