Bridge

You’ve seen this before: there he is, standing at the edge of the walkway, two hundred and twenty feet above the rippled water that from this high up looks as flat and solid as a marble floor.  It’s what, ten, eleven o’clock in the morning.  His resolve yesterday to do this is fading, but the hole in his gut is as empty as ever and the hell in his head is stoking its fires for another afternoon, night, sickly insomniac dawn.  It’s easy to imagine the wind rushing below as a hand of God that will either catch him or not, so maybe it’s just abdicating the decision, really, not deciding.  Maybe the drop is less that of a cast die and more that of an arcing punt.

What do you do?  Granted, you maybe don’t know all of this, you can’t read his mind, but you get the gist just from looking at the kid, only nineteen or twenty, spiked hair, three ear piercings, and an open-book face that’s pale under brown skin.  Do you sidle up and talk to him, try to play it natural?  Grab him by the sleeves and pull him to the pavement with you?  Or do you keep walking by - you haven’t had the easiest life either - hell, maybe the kid’s right, who are you to say?  

Does any of this even go through your head as you say Hey kid, and invite him back for a meal? - as you cook steaks and honeyed sweet potatoes and, driven by an unknown instinct, stuff him full of warm food and confessions from your own swerving past until his story starts to well up and then flows, and flows, and flows over you like the dark waters that you too have imagined yourself below.