She was waiting for Lily, not noticing the darkness nor the cold. Her tightly woven auburn locks had become rigid as they cascaded from her satin veil. Her lace dress, once white as the silk bouquet that rested in her fat and unyielding fingers, had yellowed.

Inside the cardboard box, the bride lay enshrined in an everlasting testament to her virginity. There were no wrinkles in her yellowed dress nor on the rouged brow that sat motionless above eyes that hadn’t blinked open in a decade.

Outside her tomb the cobwebs made circular pews, waiting for a groom who would never come and a bride’s maid who had once loved the porcelain bride. The fact of the matter was, she wasn’t waiting. She had been forgotten long ago. She had been replaced in Lily’s heart by two kittens, a swing set, and a boy named Jonathon.

In her dreamless sleep, the doll never heard processional music. She never smelled gardenias nor counted the ribbons as she made her way past sunzur windows of stained glass.