Swinging Bridge (version)

My route home from school (1) crossed a suspension bridge over the multi-colored water and enormous fish decaying from inside that swam along the bottom of the hazy viscous death of downriver from a paint factory amongst submerged tree branches and badly drawn hands all covered with gelatinous streamers that continuously unfurl the same lengths in the slow oscillations of colors (2).   

 

Sometimes I would stand at the center of the arc and my bouncing transformed the bridge into a bending ribbon of green metal and yellow planks; if several of us work together, the cables swung back and forth and thwacked against the iron while the plank surface twisted and straightened like each of us wanted the bridge to collapse into the river because each of us was afraid to jump.  

 

Sometimes I still cross (3) on top of the railing, passing again the point where the cable dips below and there is nothing to hang onto, describing a thin arc into the open, high above the transparent clouds of red and yellow that explode inside the surface of the viscous strange water, arms out, walking further and further into nothing to hang onto along a green line the segments of which are connected by small recurrent gardens of rivets and panic (4).
 

 

1. I see my route home through memory and its cataracts

 

2. The colors that oscillate: a painted sun in a painted sky in the black paint water.

 

3. My visual orientation hovers above the line but I exert a continuous imaginary pressure downward as if I can push my feet closer to the surface of the metal.

 

4. The swinging of my center of gravity: afraid to fall; wanting to fall.