The Bridge

 

He stares down from the bridge and he imagines turning against all he’s been told, been taught, and jumping into the algal brown of the river. He imagines the off-white spray of the sudden displacement, then the cool and quiet. His soul will carry him deeper, darker, cooler; he will feel the water around his feet thickening with silt, then around his arms, and his body, until the thickening solidifies beneath him.

He will lie down in the mud and smooth stones, among the bikes and tyres and bones. He will find comfort with the creatures of the deep darkness, their sinuous forms breaking the stillness with ripples of familiarity.

From above filters down only the memory of colour, the vague recollection of sound; a gentle snow falls around him, confirming his place in the deep.

In the stillness, he will not notice the gentle biting and gnawing; in the dark, he will only feel himself expanding, fading, as his flesh is freed from the confines of his frame and taken far beyond his resting place.

And soon he will be only the water and the dirt, and tyres and bones; he will be the swell rising and the snow falling; the off-white spray and the cool brown.

He stares down from the bridge and he imagines.