Bridge

Peter Leight

A flattened arch, curved filigree of girders and metal threads raised a little in the middle, not taking one side or the other, plunging its thick hands into the ground, wrist-deep, rooted in both sides, as if it needs to be plural.  Not veering or turning to the side, fronting or backing up, not spinning around like a pointer pointing one way or the other, or a swing that swings from one side to the other.  Choosing both sides like a mutual dependency, what looks like a scar is only the place where it’s joined together.  It’s true, we have our differences, we don’t want to be too close to each other—we prefer to be together when we feel like it, changing sides when we need to, like a book that opens in more than one language.  Sometimes you offer to exchange something you don’t want for something I don’t want.  I give you my hand, and you give me your other hand.  I go over to your side, and you come to my side.  We stop telling people where we live.  Not staying on one side or the other, I’m not saying it’s an accident or anything.  The separation is a bridge that disappears when we’re crossing it.

Peter Leight lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.  He has previously published poems in Paris Review, Partisan Review, AGNI, Western Humanities Review, Cincinnati Review, Seneca Review, The Southampton Review, Cimarron, Hubbub, and others.