Now: A Short Story in Verse

by E.M. Billington


The golden bridge sits high in the
clear blue sky, filled with
people in their vehicles, their horns
beeping. Water from
last night’s rain is
plinking onto hoods
in the sweltering sun. I slump
in my father’s passenger seat as he
taps his fingers hard 
on the steering wheel. My feet are up
on the dashboard. Normally
he would smack them back down but
now his dark eyes only
shift to me. Likely,
he is thinking 
of when they found me,
a month ago 
two years into college and two years
too drunk to finish my degree. I’d lost 
my scholarship by then anyway, by then 
I was doomed to go
back home under a set of watchful eyes,
the same ones that watched me from birth
when my mother’s set never could.
Slowly,
we’re on our way to the city—
the same city where we
lived when he first married my mother,
in a brisk autumn twenty years ago
Now the cars move faster. We’ll be
to the pristine
doctor’s office before nine,
I wonder as my father
gives the water
beneath us one last,
lingering look if he’s thinking of the woman he loved,
who was so like me. It’s as easy
to sink yourself into a stupor 
as it is in a fit
of something
to fling yourself from
a golden bridge that sits high in the
clear blue sky, filled with
people in their vehicles, their horns
beeping.