The Bridge Between Us

I don’t remember exactly when the bridge first began to crack.

Maybe it wasn’t just one moment. Maybe it was thousands — soft, silent moments that fell like dust between us. Unnoticed, unspoken, until everything was covered in a quiet kind of distance.

There was a time when we danced across that bridge.

Barefoot souls, fearless hearts. We shared stories like secrets, touched pain like poetry, and trusted each other with the raw edges of who we were. It wasn’t perfect, but it was real. And real felt like enough.

But trust is not built from stone.

It is woven from breath and time and the invisible threads of belief.

And belief, once shaken, trembles under the weight of silence.

---

At first, your silence was soft.

It felt like a breeze — a temporary hush between conversations. I told myself you were tired, that life had swallowed your words for a while. I waited. Patiently. Hopefully.

But then the silence grew roots.

Days turned to weeks.

Messages left on “read.”

Small questions left unanswered.

The familiar rhythm between us — broken.

I began to talk to the void, pretending it could still echo your voice. I replayed our conversations in my head like old songs I didn’t want to forget. I found myself standing at the edge of the bridge every night, looking across the distance where you used to stand.

And then the whispers came.

“They don’t trust you anymore.”

“Maybe you said too much.”

“Maybe you were too much.”

---

I laughed at first. Not out of humor, but out of fear.

Because what if it was true?

What if the weight of my truths had pushed you back?

What if my vulnerability had scared you?

What if the bridge couldn’t carry both our fears?

And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to leave.

Because even a broken bridge is a path.

Even cracked wood remembers footsteps.

And I still remembered yours.

---

So I began to rebuild.

Not with apologies, but with presence.

I wrote letters I never sent, filled journals with the shape of your name, and left pieces of myself in places I knew you could find — if you ever chose to look.

Sometimes healing isn’t about fixing the past.

It’s about showing up, again and again, with open hands.

It’s about planting seeds of trust, even in dry, cracked soil.

I didn’t know if you would ever walk across again.

But I began to lay words down like planks,

hoping they might carry us forward.

---

Then, one evening, I saw you.

Not close — but closer.

You stood at the far edge, arms folded, gaze uncertain. You didn’t wave. You didn’t smile. But you were there. And presence, I’ve learned, is sometimes the first apology.

I didn’t speak. I simply sat.

The space between us was still wide, but it no longer felt endless.

The next day, you took a step.

Then another.

Not every day — but often enough for hope to find its breath again.

---

One afternoon, you reached the center.

We stood face to face, with the weight of the past suspended between us.

“I didn’t know how to trust anymore,” you said.

Your voice cracked like the old wood beneath our feet.

“I’ve been hurt before. Not by you… not only. But I didn’t know how to carry it all.”

I nodded. “I know. I felt it too.”

That’s the thing about trust —

it can be lost without blame.

Sometimes it’s not a betrayal that breaks us,

but the quiet accumulation of fear,

the slow drift of two people afraid to speak.

---

We talked for hours.

Not to fix everything — but to begin again.

To name the cracks, and let them breathe.

To say: “I’m still here. Are you?”

To reply: “I want to be.”

And slowly, the bridge beneath us stopped shaking.

---

Now, the bridge still creaks.

There are days it feels fragile.

There are moments I wonder if it will hold.

But each time we meet in the middle —

each time we choose honesty over comfort,

and courage over silence —

we strengthen something ancient and invisible.

Trust is not the absence of doubt.

It is the decision to move forward anyway.

---

Sometimes, late at night, I walk to the middle of the bridge and sit alone. I don’t wait for you. I don’t need to. Because I know the path now. I know the shape of connection — its beauty, its fragility, its fierce quiet strength.

And when you come — and you do come —

we don’t have to say much.

Because trust, real trust, is built in the spaces between words.

In the steady heartbeat of presence.

In the brave return.

In the knowing that even if it breaks again —

we can rebuild.

Together.