Building or Burning Bridges

When I thought about today’s OctPoWriMo prompt (about bridges), Sting’s Fortress Around Your Heart popped into my head. (Maybe that’s why they call it pop culture?;-) ) I also thought about something my best friend had said to me one day. I was having a bad day and we were texting. I forget what we had originally begun texting about but in the ensuing conversation she told me that I am the type of person who keeps driving down a road filled with potholes and I try to miss them but I can’t miss them all. But when I come to a river that can’t be crossed because the bridge is gone, I find a way to get across and I make sure others can cross as well. Then she went on about how if I were in a pit of snakes (which I’m deathly afraid of-Indiana Jones ain’t got nothin’ on me) I’d be trying to figure a way to get out of the pit while yelling instructions on how to make perfect scones for the Queen’s impending visit to someone looking into the pit. That’s why I love my friend. She knows me way too well. So, here’s to knowing when to build bridges and when to burn them down.

Sleeping Beauty’s Message

By Jesi Scott

“Then let me build a bridge
For I cannot fill the chasm
And let me set the battlements on fire”

~Sting, Fortress Around Your Heart

You built this castle around me, left me sleeping in our tower bed.

Then out across the drawbridge you rode, broken promises

already falling from your lips. You had dragons to slay and

kingdoms to win, fair maidens to rescue-tell me,

how many damsels in distress rode upon your fine white horse?

Now you return to find the moat dried up and turned into a chasm,

the bridge has been burned and the castle a ruin of stones.

Where is your sleeping princess, oh glorious knight?

What gives your life meaning now?

I’m not a princess that needs to be saved;

I’ve two able hands that know what it means to labor

And I’ve two strong legs that know how to run.

My shoulders have known the yoke of a heavy weight.

Who was it who held the world when it all came crumbling down?

I will not build a bridge, and I cannot fill the chasm,

It was I who destroyed the castle and set it afire.

What does a sleeping princess do when she awakes?

She learns to take care of herself.