A Bridge

Cold air bit into my skin as I bolted out of the hotel lobby and into the street.
The city street was loud, busy, full of cars and honking and people rushing by.
Noise wrapped its arms around me and protected me from the voices buzzing in my ears.

[Not voices - laughter.
Two laughters.
Coming from his room, from the other side of the closed door.]

A panhandler stuck a cup in my face and asked me for change; I sidestepped him. I ducked into a coffee shop.

Starbucks. The McDonald's of coffee shops. I bought a cup of bitter black coffee and sat at a small table, and started texting furiously. To anyone who might respond and make me feel less along than I did in that moment.

[Why did I feel alone?
I've always been alone.
Even the night before, when I was with him, and looked into his eyes and ran my hands all over his body, a smooth body.
Even then I was alone, and I could feel that aloneness.
Not loneliness. Some other feeling - of being singular.
I also felt trapped within myself, as if I couldn't escape no matter what I tried to do.
And that night I tried quite a lot.]

I texted a guy I knew in New York. He always responded to texts.
He liked episodic texts: I did this, I ate that, I am drinking, I am climbing a mountain. He was well traveled and a snob; he'd offer me suggestions on what to do in this strange city. He responded to my text. He suggested the Art Institute.

I kept sipping the bitter, black coffee.
The same panhandler walked into the Starbucks.
He walked from table to table, asking for change.
I tossed out the rest of the bitter, black coffee and left, sidestepping him again, and out into the street.

The line at the Art Institute stretched for blocks.
I decided to go to the modern art museum, which was nearly empty.
I looked at Calder mobiles and installations about heartbreak.
I was not heartbroken; I merely felt alone.
I felt ashamed too.
Not because of what I had done, but because I had been a fool, naively overlooking the obvious signs that he'd been lying to me.

I decided to forget him.
[And her, whoever she was. I could guess who she was.]
I decided to spend the day - a stunningly beautiful, cold, clear day - with myself, to celebrate my aloneness, my singularity. Just doing things I enjoyed, by myself, conversing with no one, thinking, decorating myself, feeding myself.
All on this one street.

A long, magnificent street, a famous street, a street I had never really known or felt anything about before.
Today the street would be the place of my pilgrimage.
A path to the next place in my life.
A bridge.

I left the museum, lingering by an enormous Calder sculpture, and then back onto the street.

I ate lunch in an elegant, oak-lined restaurant. I drank wine with my lunch.
I walked through a giant department store, and tried on lipsticks, and perfumes, and scarves.
I bought a pair of black suede driving moccasins and slipped them on my feet.
I drank a chile-infused hot chocolate, served in a tall, slender glass.
I watched hundreds of harried shoppers walk by in their straining tracksuits and clunky shoes, their arms burdened with plastic bags.
I wandered through displays, stopping at windows to consider the merchandise.
I went to an Italian lingerie shop, trying on lace-trimmed bras and panties to accentuate the curves of my body, and purchased a set.

On the street, I walked slowly, deliberately, almost rhythmically, swinging my bag of lingerie with each stride.
I took big steps, devouring the sidewalk with my feet and drinking in the wind with my body.
I felt the wind course through my hair and slip its fingers inside the opening of my blouse near my neck.
I looked up at the sky - brilliantly blue and unmarred by clouds or smog - and turned my face toward the warmth of the sun that penetrated the cold of the wind.

There was a bridge before me.
A wide, mighty bridge.
Flanked by tall monuments of stone, undulating stone carved in the beaux arts style.
Their arms and curves, and the towers all around me, made shadows on the river below, and in the sunlight that splashed on the surface of the bridge.

On the bridge, I stopped to stand before the river and think about the past and the future, and where I might be going from that point on.

I have always paused over rivers to think about such things.
I have thrown coins in these rivers, wondering where they might wind up, if they might flow across thousands of miles to settle at the feet of someone and bring a message to this person from me.

People scurried around me to snap photographs and chatter to their friends.
I did not pay attention to their voices; their voices were white noise.

Then I heard someone say that the river flowed backward, in the wrong direction, and that someone had made it so, men had made this so. They rearranged nature to make the river flow the other way, for their own purpose.

On a bridge over a river,
A river that flows backward,
A river whose course was changed,
I stopped to think about my own course,
And threw a coin in the river.

I was not alone, the river was with me, and even though I walked away and left it behind me, I knew I would come back again, and find my coin at the feet of someone, someone who would hear my message.

He will flow like a river.
He will be a bridge.