Bridges: a Sole Collection

This article is the third edition of our collection projects, in which we ask some of our staff writers to each write a short blurb in response to a prompt. This edition’s prompt was: Write about a bridge. From card games to music to noses, we hope you enjoy our writer’s interpretations and musings on one of the most multidimensional words in the English dictionary.. Off Seekonk River - Lucy Cooper-Silvis Give me those folded bridges like calves tucked against thighs. Give me bridges gone to rust that would splinter like old bones if we lowered them again. Bridges a skyscraper devoid of offices. Bridges a ladder to nowhere. Bridges the world’s tallest trellis for kudzu, ferocious, devouring, and ugly blotches on the horizon. Fuck the Golden Gate, the London, the Roberto Clemente. Bridges neat and bow-tied and beautiful, bustling with neat and bow-tied and beautiful traffic. Bridges framed by rows of trees, fire-red in autumn, everything marching like order, order, order, good, good, good. Bridges so ready to ferry you—yes ma’am, no problem—from Point A to Point B. Bridges that don’t complain. Bridges built over inept bridges. Bridges forgetting the brokenness that came before. Give me those bridges more trouble than they’re worth. Bridges we’d rather not have. Bridges that put the fear of God in us. Bridges that groan, You fucked up. Bridges saying, I’m not needed, and only now I’m beautiful. Bridges that weep rust, like, Stay. Stay. Stay. Edwin’s Bridge - Maggie Stacey My 90-year-old friend built a bridge. It’s red, suspended between boulders, across a stream enveloped in thick dark trees folding into each other. The last time I crossed Edwin’s bridge, I was running through mud-soaked trails with my dog whose tail was tucked between her legs through the lullaby of the intensifying storm. Though the cold had broken through to my bones and my notebook was surrendering its pages to the caress of rain’s touch, I stopped to stand still in the middle of the bridge. I felt each raindrop land on my skin and I felt my heart pounding against the breath of the thickening air against my chest. I couldn’t remember why I’d been running. I ran into Edwin earlier that morning at the cafe in town. His face beamed with that Edwin-type warmth - the type that comes from a boundless passion for the world that makes one eagerly await every opportunity to spill discoveries of its beauty into another’s heart. I brought my tea to sit with him at his table and he told me the history of the French Revolution and then of France. My first tea turned into another until he said goodbye, he had to make his way home. Edwin’s my best friend’s grandfather, my mom’s best friend’s stepfather, my mom’s mom’s best friend’s husband, and my friend. On Edwin’s bridge time slows down, stops, and comes alive. Time holds my hand and we look together at the stream. Time is my past and my future and my mother’s best friend’s grandfather’s past and everyone’s future and no one’s future all happening together at once. Time stands over me and embraces me with the world’s song. Time sings the song of the leaves rustling, the creek rushing past rocks, the sticks falling off a tree branch. Time is here for sounds to become songs, for words to become stories, and for those stories to become mine to carry on. The Whee Bridge - Luca Raffa From the highway bridge, I could see the cool shores of Lake Ontario, even makeout the great Toronto skyline with my little eyes. The size of a teddy bear, I would close my eyes, shake my head loose, the wind lifting my soul, the tickle of childhood making me smile. Laughing at fear, I would throw my hands in the air, and from deep inside my tummy I would roar: wheeee! A miracle awaited me ahead: an ocean raging, shattering into an enchanting mist that rose up into an arc of a million colors. America was just on the other side. Since moving to Boston from Canada, my family would drive up to Toronto to visit my grandmother for Christmas every year. But crossing the Whee Bridge, I would keep my hands in my lap and tuck my voice into my throat. Stiff, I would nod at my memories in silence like strangers I used to know. The wind would hit my face from the window and beckon me forward. I was a ghost, entering a world of the past. It was a world that I had grown apart from, a world that had grown apart from me. But from over the bridge, I could still see the cool shores of Lake Ontario, could make out the distant Toronto skyline. In the bleakness of December, I would break a smile, rouge on my cheek, a crinkle in my nose, a tickle in my heart, knowing very well what this magic was all about. A Bridge to Paradise (Valley) - Mason Scurry I grew up in Montana, the northern heartland, the dusty soul of North America. I am wind- whipped wheat fields, a single-spiked mountain range (and then infinitely more), Lodgepoles stretching skyward. Under big skies, freedom is in no short supply. Neither is loneliness. There’s a bridge that runs over the Yellowstone River, parallel to I-90, between the Absarokas and the Crazies. It’s black, shiny metal, painted aluminum poles that criss-cross to form a tube around a train track like some steampunk rib cage. Mountainous, transcendentalist views extend infinitely through triangular gaps in the bridge. I know this because I’ve walked the bridge myself, jumping from rung to rung with the water roaring beneath me, proud I’d mastered my once-debilitating fear of heights. I was brave then, and because I was brave I was foolish, and because I was foolish I was free. And that’s what this story is really about, a bridge that’s free because it’s meaningless, free because it remains in Paradise Valley, but altogether lonely because its free. Gaps - Jules Corwin i. may i make you water under the bridge? may i draw the flesh from your bones and pull the fluid from your spine? may i curve you under the crook of your knee and watch as you lap along the shore? about sixty percent of our bodies are water. may we rise and fall in our tides together? will you show me each wave and ripple? ii. meet me across the bridge of your nose. step lightly from nostril to nostril. land at the cupid’s bow of your lips. bring me into your skin. let me dive from pore to lovely pore. let me huddle with your breath on my face. make me yours, please, i’m pretty sure i’m ready for you to be mine. iii. is each pair of ribs a broken bridge? bone winding around trying to touch the other only to be forever reaching out. iv. my grandma used to play bridge every once in a while. my grandpa played bridge and poker. now that my grandpa has died, my grandma plays bridge every week with a group of widowed women. their hands shuffle the cards, wrinkled and skilled from age, wedding rings still on, shining weights. v. how do i tell you that my feelings jumped off the bridge and you didn’t catch them before they hit the water? how do i tell you of the salty splash without re-enacting it with tears? will they fall from my eyes? will they pool in yours? who will catch the drops? vi. question: why did my mom cross the bridge? answer: because she can’t swim vii. in gymnastics, there is a pose called “bridge.” with your index fingers and thumbs creating a triangle, press your palms into the ground. push your body towards the sky and straighten your knees as far as possible. it may be uncomfortable to breathe. viii. we made bridges with our bodies, ached for our hands to cross every inch. we didn’t worry about what might be on the other side. whether it was sweet or prickly. ix. i used to walk down to the bridge between st paul and minneapolis. the lights on the other side reminded me that somewhere, people were dancing. x. the songs play bridges, croon across lyrics and notes. sometimes i don’t know how far the distance is, how many steps they count, but their words reach me anyway. xi. a bridge collapsed in maryland. and west virginia. and missouri. new york, indiana, mississippi, rhode island, illinois, ohio, iowa, new jersey, massachusetts, kentucky, pennsylvania, colorado, michigan, oklahoma, washington, wisconsin, south carolina, louisiana, kansas, georgia, virginia, florida, connecticut, tennessee, california, arkansas, alabama, new hampshire, north carolina, texas, minnesota, hawaii, montana, maine. thirty-seven out of fifty (seventy-four percent). xii. how many stones does it take to make a bridge? only one, if you leap far enough, maybe. xiii. our interlaced fingers bridge the distance between our beating hearts, and for a moment i imagine that we may feel the same thing. then your hand strays along the curve of my hip and i crumble. Track 12 - By Maison Teixeira I press play. I> The sound of a hand, frozen in time as it strums a guitar before I was born, plays in my ears. The guitar repeats the same two chords, four times each, over and over again. I leave my dorm room, descend the stairs, and make my way through the garden in front of my dorm. As I watch a squirrel scuttle across the grass, a soft, deep voice sings: “Underneath the bridge... tarp has sprung a leak... and the animals I’ve trapped... have all become my pets...” His melancholic words, sung from somewhere beyond this life, carry me through the busy streets. There is a distinct loneliness to his song, as if his voice is on the verge of breakdown. The world outside my headphones falls away, replaced with the sound of his voice and his guitar. The passing conversations, the birds tweeting and chattering, and the cars, whose drivers angrily mutter under their breath as I cross the road without looking both ways, all disappear to the bridge, the best part of the song, where the drums, bass, and the cello finally kick in. I make it to the other side of the street and turn a corner, but the road is closed, and there’s… “Something in the way...something in the way...yeah...” I look to the other side of the street. My best friend is walking in the opposite direction. II We smile at each other as I take off my headphones and cross the street, suddenly thankful that there was… something in the way. Crossing Over - Elsa Eastwood I read and reread Paper Towns the summer of our final visit to San Francisco. It was full of John Green’s characteristically cynical aphorisms, but one particular line lodged itself in my mind—one I couldn’t yet understand that was waiting for its moment. My family went to San Francisco every year. My parents grew up there, and they passed the city on to us like an heirloom. I remember the unfathomable magic of Fairyland in years when it was socially acceptable to sport striped pajamas in the daytime. Sneaking out just after dawn with my mother for focaccia at the bakery in North Beach, the old men hunched over cappuccinos and newspapers. Searching for pirates with my father in the dense fog. By the time my younger brothers were old enough to spell their names, we had done almost everything there was to do there. We met all of our Northern California relatives. We watched fourth-of-July fireworks from Aquatic Park and the wrestling seals in residence at Pier 39. We muscled our way through the entire Ghirardelli menu. Yet, one unturned stone loomed at the back of my mind. I remember seeing it for the first time—stretched across the horizon, cables fragmenting a cloudless sky. The grandeur of the muted steel, the romantic history. I sat long past my bedtime in the window of the rental house, gazing in dreamlike reverence at the millions of artificial stars that illuminated its sweeping limbs. How fitting its name was. How big and beautiful the world seemed. By that summer, the emblem of ingenuity had become to me a reminder of the one San Francisco milestone I had yet to conquer. It was time: I would walk the Golden Gate Bridge. The day came. Cars barrelled past. Every noise was thunderous. The five of us clung desperately to the red handrail, eyes darting between signs that warned, “The Consequences to Jumping are Fatal and Tragic”, “Emergency Phone and Crisis Counseling”, and “There is Hope! Make the Call!” My hair whipped my face until it stung. I pulled it aside just in time to see my middle brother wedge his body between two of the bars to catch a glimpse of the bay 200 feet below. “Donovan! Away from the edge!” my mother cried, her voice swallowed by the wind as she lunged to grab his arm. We watched as a particularly wild gust sent my father’s baseball cap cartwheeling through the air into traffic. A wail from my youngest brother pierced the chaos. I tightroped the line between speeding cars and fatal fall in silence. I felt betrayed by my vision, thrust violently into the truth like a toddler into a glassy pool. The bridge’s seismic hum made waves beneath my feet as I inched forward. I never thought I would succumb to negativity; the world had always been kind to me, my imagination always unchallenged by experience. But as I stood there, facing a 40-minute walk and the grim reality of my postcard fantasy, I understood: Everything’s uglier up close. The Plunge - Desi SIlverman-Joseph Jumping off the bridge was the coolest thing you could do when we were little. Addie was the first of us boys to do it. When he landed in the water, I saw my uncle’s face light up with pride. He pumped his arms triumphantly—as if to say, That’s my son! He’s not scared of no bridge. I still have the scrapbook photo commemorating the event. We stared, dumbstruck, as Addie climbed out of the water. My brothers and cousin offered congratulatory remarks, but I felt a pang. I sought that same approval—that stamp of manhood that can only be achieved by falling twelve feet off the side of a railing and into salty waters below. On top of the bridge, cars raced by, not aware of the feat of courage that was to be committed in their midst. I clasped my dad’s hand tightly and peeked over the railing. My insides sunk three feet. “Uncle Danny will be in the water to meet you,” my dad reassured me. He helped me climb up the two craggy wooden slats guarding the bridge. I stood on top of the railing, capped by a flat plank of wood so thin its width matched the length of my little feet. I witnessed the vastness of the ocean before me, blossoming out from my chest. My dad held my hand for stability. “You got this!” Uncle Danny shouted from below. My eyes welled with tears. “I can’t do it, Dad,” I choked up. I turned back toward the road, unable to look my dad in the eyes. I walked my wimpy legs back down to the seashore in shame and hoped that next year I would be brave enough. The cars still sped by overhead.