EXCERPT #4
by Abigail St. Clair Thomas
You stand on a bridge on the other side of the world. it’s late, still. There’s a quiet that reaches out over from your feet to places you can’t see. This place has palaces, you think softly, palaces guarded with men beating other men over the head. Home doesn’t have that. you look out again. You don’t know what took you here, you think you may someday and that’s alright. There’s something to not knowing anything and being alone and being away. Birds fly up and over your head and you walk across the bridge you like less than the one adjacent, a few feet down the river. You’ll get out of here, things can move you, you remember. You’re realizing the sky doesn’t look the same everywhere and you’re getting used to the way it looks here. Trees with new, white blossoms reach out over toward the middle of the walkway like these milky outstretched hands you brush past. A twisted canal to the right that juts out into darkness and more flowers. A beautiful place that almost stops you from missing somewhere else. In the half dark on the cusp of that morning light. Lovers close initialed locks around an iron grate below one of the statues on the bridge. Just a kaleidoscope of metal and letters to you. on something that only connects two other places. People trying to make things last in cities they’ve left behind. What are the chances.