The Bridge

By Tanner Bruckmann

In loving memory of all of the angels who couldn’t be themselves

          “I need the room for the night,” Jason stated rather than asking, to his roommate Dylan.

“Whatever, man” Dylan replied. Neither Dylan nor Jason were very fond of each other and while both young men always had been friendly with others, their conversations together were just as often blunt as they were scarce. Dylan left the room, leaving his roommate alone to study.
 Jason was sitting on the foot of his bed, frozen it seemed in his thought, his eyes were fixed on his spiral-bound notebook, but his thoughts were far off.

The notebook started to transform. Slowly it shifted into a computer screen, and his bed changed into cardboard boxes stacked up in the very same room. He had just finished settling into his dorm, he was a freshman at the New Jersey State College and he was now anxiously awaiting a reply message from his parents. He had just let them in on some big news, life changing truths that they never had known, that they never expected. But no matter how hard he stared at the screen they wouldn’t reply. He sat and waited, and just as soon as he was about to close his laptop, his heart skipped a beat. There was a message. Your father is proud of you no matter what Jason, as for me… We both love who you are, I just need time.

“They love who I am?” He questioned. It ate at him as he read and reread the message. He put down his computer, stood up and walked the short distance to the mirror. He was average height, average weight, he wore thin glasses that sat upon a thin and freckled nose. He had a short jaw and small lips that were set in a way that made him look as if he were always smiling. He looked down to his hands, rough and strong, that what was important in his life. His hands and his violin. They drove across metal twine to make beautiful music. He had hands shaped of gold, beautifully crafted to navigate the instrument he loved so dearly. What people saw was a smart young man and his ability to play the violin, not the Jason that he kept hidden for so long.

 He looked back up from his hands and into the mirror, He reeled in horror, knocking over everything behind him. Looking back at him was his parent’s nightmare, his fellow students joke, he saw a man who’s skin was ripped off and pasted back on, his eyes burning as red as the gunk smeared over his lips. The demon reached out in agony, and Jason fell backwards.

A knock at the door made Jason jump, his notebook scattered on the floor and his papers fell silently to the ground.

The sun swam upon the edge of the sky, painted every shade of pink and purple, preparing to take its final breath before it plunged beneath the horizon. A second knock made him sprint to the door not realizing how long he had dozed off. The door opened to a familiar face, and a warm smile.

“Excited?” the smile laughed, as they immediately fell into each others arms. They pulled apart, their eyes locked, and the pair embraced a second time. Pulling each other closer, Jason closed the door as they stumbled into the room. Their lips touched once and then again and again, until they were tightly locked, neither wishing to ever pull away. Time had frozen for Jason,  but his heart was punching out of his chest, and his lips stretched into a joyous crescent that he felt would never leave his face. 
But it quickly faded, a shiver ran down his spine, and the hairs on his arm stood on end, there was someone watching, he could feel it. Pulling away he started to search the room.

“Come back to the bed,” insisted his lover, pulling on his shirt sternly. Lust clouded Jason’s fear and as their bodies met the two fell deeply in a pit of fiery excitement.

Rays of light poked through the dorm room window, collecting themselves on Jason’s shoulders. He met them with heavy eyes and a fistful of sheets. He danced with the covers but it soon turned to a desperate struggle for comfort,  he soon gave in and shook the sleep from his eyes. Jason was awake but his day felt like a dream, he floated in and out of memories from the night before. So much so that he was yet to notice the smirks, the whispers guarded by hands and the quick double takes as he passed others, a symphony played in his brain that no one could hear except his heart.

Then somewhere in the music a note was missed, and then a chord, the Orchestra playing inside Jason was falling apart. Watching himself, he saw his music end, he saw the sun falling in the sky outside of his dorm room. He found drops of pain salted with anger dropping from his eyes. The room that once felt like a safe haven was like solitary confinement, he was alone, he was alone and no one could reach him, but there on his desk sat a secret window to the outside world. A truth that Jason could not handle, he threw the monitor across the room, the power cord flying through the air, landing on the floor after whipping against the wall. In one motion Jason left his chair and ran out of his room leaving the door swinging.

    The day’s light was growing short and the moon was beginning to cast her cold grey across the horizon. The few autumn leaves that hadn’t fallen were turned up to the heavens waiting for drops of guidance. But the chill in the air was cold as steel and was quicker to anchor the leaves to the ground than let them glide through the air.

The steely cold stung Jason’s cheek. The coiled metal cut into his body. His whole body ached, but his heart raced faster than the cars behind and under him. His feet balanced on the edge of a rusted handrail, the lightest push could have made him fall back on the hard concrete, or to the infinite depths of the black River Styx.

 Jason’s heartbeat added to the Bridge’s concerto as he teetered on the edge of despair. All the noises seemed to be amplified; but then the music was drowned out by the ticking of his wrist watch. He looked down to his arm and the starlight illuminated the glass of his watch, there he saw the man, the man with the torn face and red caked across lips, and he jumped.

Had the sun still been falling, Jason would have fallen with it, but there was no light. Only the cold glow of the moon watched his folly. The music reached its climax, but the bridge was silent. Jason heard the coo of harps, and the slow beat of wings, his wings. He was in draped in gold and his radiance reflected off of the bridge’s cold metal beams, Jason looked around as he kept ascending. Everything was brighter and looking down he saw the man with the torn face smiling his eyes bright, and his hand waving as he stood on the cold metal bridge. And he smiled back.         

I'm No Painter

I am no painter, nor photographer,

Brush strokes seldom strike what words can.

When a painting of a tree is nothing other,

I can show what you cannot see but understand,

A mother, spreading her children through the world,

A sentinel of time, the elder of shade,

The home to many furry animals curled.

To the stars it reaches, in heaven’s whisper, wades.    

Barricades to the cities, on cliffs above beaches,

A phoenix of seasons only human can hinder.

A memorial to the lovers’ eternal preaches.

Leaves painted yellow, orange, and fresh cinder.

To paint a tree on paper could not be plainer,

But to paint the mind! But alas I’m no painter.   

Goldfish

 A stroll in the park, how wonderfully mundane, the concrete path cracked and speckled with pebbles, blades of grass poking through. The lush trees danced in the autumn breeze with birds singing their twilight tune. Squirrels ran and jumped collecting summer’s last fruits and nuts, stowing them in the fertile soil for the winter. Red rosebushes climbed the wooden branches, while silent strangers sit and read their books or eat their dinner. In the distance a boy plays with his golden retriever, the Frisbee glides through the air floating on the breeze it reflects the pink and purple of the approaching night. The retriever jumps snatching the disk out of the air and with it in his maw, prances back to his boy who is kneeling with open arms. A woman with headphones on jogs past me, her red shorts swishing, and the faint smell of perfume kisses my lips and tickles my nostrils. I quicken my step because the sun is starting to get lower, mosquitoes buzz around a pond to my left, it is adorned with grey and black stones, some round and some jagged, I spot a few goldfish from where I walk, their fins lazily propelling through the water rippling the top of the pond. I look up at the clouds; they're gracefully gallivanting through the sky. My feet slowly come to a stop, the breeze rustles my hair, and my eyelids close around my cherry wood eyes. My legs tense, I jump like the retriever did, like the Frisbee I rise into the sky. Higher and higher steadily I get closer to those fluffed white pillows. Like the leaves on the trees my clothes ripple and sway as I climb above the clouds. Like the fish in the pond I swim above the earth. A sense of harmony befalls me as I glide into the horizon. I look up, the pale glow of countless stars look back down at me, now I’m going straight up, faster and faster, a dart headed for the bulls eye, I’ll never stop climbing tonight.      

Neverland

Call all of the lost boys I’m leaving Neverland,

I’m packing away my toys, and my stories,

Leaving them for recollection down the road.

Farewell! Farewell, for you cannot join me past the folds

Of time. Leave you in the rhyme, I must, I must

Dust you off when I’m old and yearning.

Gone are the days when we watched the dinosaurs

Float through the sky. Gone are mermaids, talking cars,

The genie, his lamp, and dreams of conquering mars.

 I must take my place as Atlas, and there is no room for bliss.

My bags are packed. My feet are ready. No time for a goodbye kiss

Piglet, I must be off. But soon I find,

On the edge of 100 Acre I realize I haven’t a clue!

Because my heart is a big jar of honey, filled up just for Pooh.

Because I wish I had three wishes, all of them to stay with you.

Farewell to the others who lives will be bland,

Call all of the Lost Boys I’m never leaving Neverland!  

Hangman

Oh Hangman! Hangman what have I done?

My life before, no evil had I spun,

No wrongs wrought me to this dusty alter.

My last words, I vow, should surely falter.

When neck and noose meet in matrimony,

When I an angel, my feet hovering

I should kiss the angel of death,

And my freedom flutters with the doves.

At the gallows I do stand,

In front of the mourning sun.

Oh Hangman! Hangman!

What have I done?

The Absence of Age

In the absence of age, love is free
The truths of words are the strings of heart
And the heart strings of a harp, you look at me
Together, ageless, forever one part
Sheets on the moonlit summers eve
Your eyes are stars the sky a mirror
Souls intertwined neither able to breathe
Always pulled apart wishing to be nearer
I the moon you the sun, the earth our love
Because you burn bright a true goddess
And i'm only there because your above
I sit under, loving none the less
You are a morning dove, and I the night
We can never be even though its right

Phoenix

A man is dead
red ash and white flames fall
Out of the cinder comes a cry
a dead man brings new life's call
the head of a small bird pokes through the dust
eyes blind and memory blank
He shakes to find he is out of the ashey womb
A hiccup of flame, and a flutter of undeveloped wings
in the dead man's tomb