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The Bridge
by
Harry Buschman
Rose Clair paused before crossing the footbridge. It was strange to see her
dressed as a young woman. She was, after all eighty four, yet she was wearing
straw sandals and a flowered summer dress. A wide brimmed white straw hat was
tied under her chin.
It was Friday, and the first full moon in the month of June. He left on a
Friday, back in 1943, and the moon was just as full that night as it is now. She
wore the same flowered dress - he was in uniform. They worked all through the
week getting the vegetable garden ready for summer, and he told her it would be
over soon and he would be home to share it with her in the fall.
Rose Clair walked to the center of the bridge and stared out at the setting
moon. She counted up the years and the thousands of moons that rose and set
between that night and this one. She looked into the dark water and saw herself
looking down at herself -- an old woman now. “Too old,” she thought. “Who would
come home to an old woman like Rose Clair?” She cursed the passage of time and
the sadness of loving a young man of twenty-three -- a man who would always be
twenty-three.
She walked into the summer house that looked out over the lake. In the darkness,
she ran her fingers over their carved initials in the wooden bench. She waited,
and before long she felt his presence next to her. It was as strong as ever it
had been.
“There’s something about love,” she thought. “It is a bridge that never grows
old.”
Harry Buschman
(280)
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