They'd held hands along the way;
him entreating her to continue.
It wasn't easy not to look back, or down.
The trellis crossed a racing dull gray river.
In such water, surely, one would be swept away
and never heard from again. She kept thinking,
"Surely...we will see better days."
"We are in a land like Mars," she thought.
"A strange, foreign land. And this isn't me...
this isn't me."
It would be years later that she would look
back with any clarity on the events that had
brought them here.
"This present pain is more than I can bear;"
she would think...and then in the next breath
she would chide herself for indulging in despair;
for swimming in her hopelessness and her self-pity
as if it were a river.
"Things will look clearer in the morning, Babe.
Just take one more step."
The bridge trembled underfoot, but held.
She almost leapt off the last plank,
her relief palpable to be, at last, on solid ground.
I love the tension throughout this story, lg. And I wanted to know what had happened to her in times past to make this journey even more scary for her. I'm glad she made it solid ground.
ReplyDeleteI can just feel that trepidation, lg. This is just lovely.
ReplyDeleteTalon ~Thank you! I attended a poetry reading meeting yesterday at a local bookstore. A Pushcart prize winning poet read his work. I came home *just needing* to write...and this is what came out.
ReplyDeletelg
Lynn, Thank you so much. She makes it over the bridge (the bridge idea was inspired by a friend's photo) but there is still a rocky path ahead.
ReplyDelete:)
lg