She comes down the stairs in light that turns her skin to alabaster, and the suitors fall silent the way men do when they see something beautiful enough to scare them. She wears white. The color of mourning and marriage both. She has learned to wear the same dress to mean two different things, and the suitors cannot tell which one she means today. Her voice is steady as a woman who has rehearsed steadiness so often it becomes true. The dress is the negotiation she has been running for twenty years, made cloth: not a no, not a yes, a maybe held in the seams. She stretches another evening out of the men in her hall and goes back upstairs.
The White Dress
White, the color of mourning and marriage both. She has learned to wear the same dress to mean two different things.