Spindley, weak-kneed, Erector Set looking bridge. You can feel the metal shake as cars cruise past, close enough to reach out and touch. There's only a slight path to the side of the roadway, and that roadway is mighty slender to begin with. But it's a picturesque stroll, especially in the dead of night when you have a ferry to catch.
I never seemed to mind the walk when I was just going back and forth to work. As a matter of fact walking that bridge pretty much told me that I was close to home, well, as close as the Horluck ferry would allow. But that night, that cold February night, we were wondering if we would be on time for that ferry. We had betwix us enough for cab fare, but it was along ride from Bremerton to Port Orchard. We knew that we had minutes to spare, and those minutes meant hustling hard across that bridge and across town to the dock.
What those fast ticking minutes didn't take into account was that The Moment was upon us. It didn't take into account that your hands were cold in those thin leather gloves of mine and needed warming. They didn't take into play that the lighting that was just so, the fact that the cars, so numerous a moment ago, had magically stopped running. Time had somehow flipped a switch. The stars, crystal bright, came into focus, the bridge lights burning almost sepia, the air hot from running. Then, and only then, could it have happened. The Kiss.
Not that we hadn't kissed before, and not that it was the last. But sometimes you do something that comes to you in Capital Letters, and I know that among all the kisses that we shared that that one, that one on the bridge stopped time, warped light, turned cold into heat and turned a cold February night into summer again.
For the moment.
Then we took up the chase and made our way huffing and puffing across town. We made the ferry last minute, trailing cold air and a lifetime of stretched minutes into the cabin with us. Somehow we defied the clock on Manette Bridge, and the bridge, still standing, allowed for it.
Yours, WHMB
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