They crossed the bridge they’d crossed so many times as children. They crossed it just once more as grown ups. Crossed it once again, just this one last time, never to cross again.
The ravine was deep. They said that it was bottomless. Forever going down into the depths of the world and never ending.
They said if you fell in you never would stop falling. They said you’d live forever in that fall, but no one wanted to find out if that was actually true.
Grown ups said so many things we never knew if they were true. And then when we were grown ourselves they said that we must leave. They said that we must cross that bridge again, but this time not return.
Like they who left us last year. Like they who left the year before. Like they who always left us never to return.
Only now it was our turn to not return.
The bridge was narrow. It was hard to cross. The wind would blow and sometimes children fell. Forever went on falling so they say.
It was harder for the ones who were no longer children. Hard to cross this narrow bridge without a fall. Harder still to walk into the jungle on the other side where the children never went.
No one had ever returned once they were grown. No one who had stepped into that jungle had come back.
And now it was our turn.
We walked to where the bridge begins. We looked back at all that we had known. We walked across the narrow bridge so careful not to fall into the endless ravine. We walked into the jungle never to return.
We crossed that bridge to another world…
…never to cross again.
gyllenbogel 