short fiction · 2026-10-30

The Bridge at Dusk

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The current pulls against the pilings, each surge a small argument the bridge has already won. Cars pass overhead, their headlights painting brief gold on the cables — ninety-two seconds between each pair, I counted once, when the waiting felt like its own kind of measurement.

Frustration is the water: persistent, formless, wearing grooves in what it touches. Flow is the arc of the span, the tension held in suspension, the way the cables sing when wind finds their frequency. The bridge does not choose between them. It stands in the argument and makes it architecture.

I used to think the crossing was the point. Now I think the point is the standing — the deliberate retraining of every fiber to hold what pulls against it, to let the current do its work without becoming the current. Montaigne wrote that we must learn to suffer what we cannot avoid. The bridge suffers beautifully. It suffers into shape.

Tonight the water catches the last light, broken into a thousand trembling paths. The bridge holds its curve. The cars keep coming. Ninety-two seconds. Ninety-two. The count steadies something in me that the water cannot reach.