The Bridge
His home was a bridge. Not the kind of bridge that links land on both sides so predictably that a person might not even notice the crossing. But the kind that can suddenly disconnect - part of it going high into the air and isolating one shore from another.
That part – suspended away from everything . . . is where he lived.
How did he wind up in such a precarious place? People liked to say, generally with derision in their voices, it was from choices he had made. They had counseled him to choose otherwise and when he didn’t, they were hurt or angry.
They were partly right – he had taken every feeble and faltering step voluntarily. But at the same time he didn’t know for sure how it had happened.
He would lie awake at night on the hard steel wondering why he was there. The water lapping below would remind him that he had no home, and he would weep.
But sometimes when the moon was full with pregnant beauty, an impression of unseen grace drifted down. He perceived his isolation to be a strange blessing, for the rift in comfortable connections exposed the ancient pain lurking in his heart.
He had always sought the solace of others as distraction from the subtle agony within his own breast. On the bridge he had nothing to turn to but himself. However hard a task, this must be done.
But what of the near shore and the far shore? Yes, someday the bridge might allow passage again. Yet he had begun to understand that peace must first be made with uncertainty and loneliness, and belonging nowhere, and to no one.
