Short Story: The Lost Bridge

A dream that repeats endlessly. Your face that flies away with my vanishing memories. A central truth forgotten however sought after.

“I will show you the secret garden” — she said the last time we met. “I will be waiting for you in the shore. Don’t be late”.

I can’t remember what she said before or how I came across her in the first place. All I gather is we had talked about love and she had revealed to me how to find it in my life.

Through arduous and windy paths I have searched for it. Long burdened by the weight of a road that twists at the end of straight patches and leads me closer but seems to never reach its end.

When I was with you every day life had a direction. But as the distance between us increased, so did my vision blur. Water turned into vinegar and bright days into a tasteless and amorphous confusion of places and events.

What was the secret garden you wanted to show me? What did I learn with you when I was young that was forgotten as the years went by? Will I ever meet you again, ever see clearly as day the light of your truth?

I walked down the street on a rainy day last week. Inside an old inn a family was having dinner. They were not rich nor famous and had many sorrows to think of. But each was completely focused on the other, caring more for the happiness of the other than for the sorrows of the self.

A burning love that did not fade. A selfless love that made everything beautiful. A secret door to a garden lost in time.