I did not look for you when I first noticed you were missing. When I heard a ship docking in the front yard, I opened a window and called out your name. This was the kind of thing you couldn’t stand— guests meant you had to take off your slippers, shave, and peel enough oranges for everyone. You would put your head next to mine on the pillow at night and ask why everyone couldn’t peel their own oranges. During this time, the time that a bridge lay across our bed, I would kiss the hill of your shoulder and ask to play our favorite game. Tell me two truths and a lie, I would say.

You are beautiful, you’d whisper. Your soul is beautiful. You would say soul like it was a delicate thing that I wore around my neck, like a pendant, like something I would display. Nothing about you is absent. The last one was always the lie.I have never been lost. I have never carried a map and I have never planned a trip further than my departure. I have been to Los Angeles, where I had many people ask me where I was going. I have been to Pittsburgh, where I fell in love with a bridge. I have loved many bridges. I have seen the way they hang, segmented but whole. I have pressed my ear against them and heard the whir of cars and the nothingness of air. I have stood at their crests, looked down, and smiled into creeks, rivers, and ditches, so dry that the dirt coughs back in my hair. I have often wondered if they shivered, bolts clattering and wires dancing, rust and algae creeping up like Sunday nights. When I first cross a bridge, I see what it is holding together. One road, two halves of a city, a thousand husbands and wives and mistresses. Two rivers that would never kiss banks are future lovers. I wanted to be loved by what connected these things. To be bound, to be shore-bound—now that, I would not stand.I bought coffee and watched the people reach destinations I could not, I cannot. I watch union, reunion, dissolution. I have seen both ends, and the ended. When a ship passed under my bridge, I would run to see the arch split, divorcing lanes of traffic. I never worry about becoming disconnected. I reach with my legs for the divide even when I know I will not breach the gaping mouth of my beloved. I willingly fall into water, onto decks, into nests of ropes and the arms of sailors. I recently revealed to you that I would never stop climbing dull green scaffolding in search of love. I assured you that you were not my first. You peeled another orange in our invisible kitchen. You wondered what would be enough—the Golden Gate? The Brooklyn? Collapsing underneath the sheets, I will try to tell you two truths and a lie. The ship in the front yard will not move. I find myself doused in perfume. I am in love with too many bridges.

bascule of a heartdanie vollenweider

ps

19ps+