Analysis of The distance between one person and the next was as...

The distance from one person to the next was equal to the length of a

Bridge. There. Right at the edge of it

Forty-four full miles from the heart of the house

to where the road hit rubble and

the brown factories gave way to the wide-expanse

of the empty lots and the long line of trees,

and the old watch tower carved from the side of the cliff,

where from its roof one could see the edge of the world:

edge of the sea: wide arc of the sky that was

uninterrupted: bridge. And on some Sundays,

when the sun shone, and the wind, yes,

was strong enough to blow off course

a boat happily missing: one car.

A brown station wagon, my dad at the wheels

my mother listening to the news

we at the back, sticking our small heads

out of the window, could be seen crawling its wayward

way over this quick skip between the islands.

The distance between one person and the next was equal to the length of a

Story. Schools of shark

circling in droves across the ocean floor (dead bodies),

scouring the scrags of old corrals for

missing fingers: Once, in the mid-70’s, they say,

a huge sea monster sick with what the old milling company

had been spilling for years into the sea, hit the foot of the bridge

and caused ten families and their cars skidding off into the water.

What we did not see we did not believe; besides,

it took only three full sentences screamed into

the opposite lane of cars and tricycles and a truck

of dead hogs for us to get to the other side--

End of the bridge. End of the story.

The distance between one person and the next was as deep as the

Sea. As if I had any choice in the matter.

Or Tina. Now there are so many, many things

to believe in: drowned, and then found, and

then laughing hand in hand into the waves,

I can almost re-tell the story in a different light

while the whole world was watching:

not break when she did right into the rocks

crystal gelatinous heart when they opened her