Building A Bridge

Walking up from my side of the bridge is a chore, but this night I do it all the same, driven by a haunting tug in my gut, a thick and heavy feeling. This was our bridge, our work, our connection to be made. Every slat running across from left to right was cut by my hands into a shape that I imagined.

And I knew what it meant when you said that I wouldn't be able to see how far to build or how far you were coming. Each piece that I placed, starting from the beginning, was more and more difficult to support, as if I was building not to meet you but towards nothingness, as if you had already stopped coming my way. Every bit of progress that I made only made me look forward to see that that bit of progress hadn't changed a thing. But I could only keep building, for fear that what you had left in me would never find its way back.

To you, I was probably not moving quickly. Not even quickly enough, just quickly, because for there to be an enough it would mean that you expected me to have some sort of pace, to gain some sort of distance, as if that total gap across the chasm was even measurable. Was I headed the right way? Every thought I held and every move I made was perhaps even a lie to myself, because though these were years of progress, these steps that I take now returning here are just steps of regret.

Each foot I place down has the ground's texture and feel rise up through me like a rough warning, because I haven't even gotten to the start of the bridge yet and already my hands pick up the next part to put in place almost automatically. My hands once blistered, now calloused, only starting to regain life, now struggle and tear on contact with my chosen material: my heart.

This bridge that I've built for all this time is made from bits and pieces of my heart, because you are on that other side where I can't see you yet you are there, and this bridge made of my heart is going to reach you and so, my heart will carry you to me. This bridge is one that I've built from my heart... Or so I felt when I began to build, because my heart was simply not large and great enough to build a bridge so wide and so strong. I quit for my heart's sake, for I had no more heart to go on, and my bridge, as I walk out to the edge, as if staring into an infinite distance, ends hanging out into nowhere, pointing I hope in your direction.

And now I stand here, about to put down the very last bit of my heart that I have, and it occurs to me that perhaps I should save this bit, because surely it will not get you to me. My gut still rings because that bit of you that you left in me, perhaps accidentally, is still struggling to be set free, and at times I don't even know if I am building this bridge to let it out, or if I am building this bridge so that I can get the rest of it from you, but it is stuck there for now.

So as I stand there sighing because I am inclined to sigh, and I suddenly realize that I ought not to be using my heart at all, or at least not like this, because this is why I cannot help but return here ready to give up more of myself though you may not even know or remember. No, my heart is not large enough, so I suppose that I need somebody else's heart, one that is much greater than mine, to build bridges to you, and also for you. That way, I will one day meet your bridge in the middle as we had both hoped for one another unknowingly, and then I will give you this last piece of my heart that I faithfully kept safe until the awaited day.