by Chase Wootton
As I looked over the bridge, hundreds of feet above the waters, I couldn’t decide which was more beautiful: her, or the sunset. It unfolded in front of me — a splash of red, gold, and orange across the sky, as if a godly chef had sprinkled oranges, pineapples, and cherries across the heavens. The wind was cool and peaceful, the sky clear of rain, snow, or dreary weather. In front of me, there was only beauty, only color, only depth of goodness.
But she wasn’t there. No, she had left. The only sight of her beauty was that which lingered in my memory. Her hair had been golden like the sunset. Her lips had been red like cherries. Her nails had been orange like a mandarin. Her perfect skin had been smooth like the skies above, where stratus clouds looped like playful sprites. I couldn’t see her then. I couldn’t see her ever again.
The water below was murky, polluted by the trash and dark chemicals dumped into it by the city that unfolded on both sides of the river. A car drove past me as I stood there, depositing yet another newspaper page into the waters. They were deep and unknowable — black against the sky. The waters held nothing; A meaningless void, absorbing the light from the setting sun.
The waters frightened me.
And it was at that moment that I had my doubts. Maybe — just maybe — I could find a second chance. So, instead of staring at the waters, I climbed off the bridge’s edge, and I began to walk.
My footfalls, once heavy as I walked to the bridge, lightened as I continued along it and into the heart, and the depths, of the city. I held a lily in my hand, its pinkish tint reflecting in the sunlight and the water. I had taken it from the woman of the same name — picked it from where it lay by her side. I had not let go of it for hours.
I had loved her. More than anything else in the world, I had loved her. Yet as I neared the city I could not help but wonder if she, like the sunset, had faded into the deep waters as the night approached, a beautiful thing long forgotten to the darkness — hugged by it, embraced by it. I did not know. I could not know.
As I finally reached the sidewalk, a part of me was relieved to be out of the street. Ironically, the cars speeding past at fifty miles per hour on the bridge had given me anxiety. They had scared me, somehow. What a sobering, humorous thought that was.
And maybe I was just scared. The lily in my hand seemed to echo that thought. Was I holding on to it because I was afraid to let go? I had to at some point, after all. I couldn’t hold on forever, as much as I wanted to. The sidewalk beneath my feet would crumble, the lily in my hand would decay, and the woman I loved would disappear from my memory, those incredible times of joy replaced by ones of sorrow — ones of a lonely man walking down streets, searching for meaning in the hum of vehicles and radiators next to office buildings and crumbling houses.
I began to regret leaving the bridge. What had I come out here for? To delay the inevitable? The skyscrapers above me were gargantuan, looming like powers beyond my control that threatened to squash me — a bug — beneath their enormous figures. All day, men and women filtered in and out of them, slaving away at some work they would never be satisfied with until their bones ached and their skin sagged, their gift for retirement being a simple baked good — soggy and stale from sitting in the office all day, made of unsightly materials prepared in similarly disgusting and unethical ways. Did I really want to join in that fate?
Yet as I rounded the corner, the sunset appeared again, like a reminder of Lily overshadowing the bleakness of the earth. For once, the heavens were reflected in the windows of the gloomy skyscrapers, bringing not dread, but another ounce of beauty, milked from a memory dying before me.
I passed a park as I went. The trees there had just begun to bloom, whipped by the April wind as new beginnings sprouted from the ashes of the winter. Children played with their parents, overjoyed by the prospect of a grasshopper perched on a blade of grass. They squealed when it jumped, surprised by such a simple motion — happy from seeing a minuscule leap.
The children’s joy spread in a ripple, to their parents, who laughed at their playfulness, to the couple who sat on the bench nearby who overheard the children squealing, and oddly enough, to me as well. To my surprise, a warmth began to spread in my chest.
Yet immediately, guilt replaced it. Lily had wanted kids one day. We both had. Flashes in my memory of hospital beds and the beautiful woman shrouded in grief reminded me of how that dream had died, and before long, she had faded away to join those stillborn embryos. I looked at the children, saw how peaceful they looked, and longed for their ignorance. To them, life was new. It was something to be explored.
Not for me.
I passed the park, trying not to spit at the couple who romantically looked into each others’ eyes, smiles spreading across their faces as their love blossomed like the surrounding trees. I looked at the lily in my hand as I walked, and it was limp in comparison. The stem was like a deflated balloon, or a man too tired to hold his head above his shoulders.
When I arrived at the city square it had just begun to fill with people. The setting sun’s last rays found coffee shops and restaurants scattered among the open space. The sounds of laughter and light conversation filled the air. It was nonsensical — meaningless — people trying to make sense of a world that did not care for them, as they did not care for it.
These were the people who would burn forests, destroy homes, and drain impoverished peoples for money, fame, power, or status. There was nothing here for them to have light conversations about. It was merely a distraction — meaningless folly.
Yet I could not ignore them.
I could not stop my ears from picking up how Jennifer had just met her friend Susan from high school. I could not stop them from picking up how Roger had found a new job at the pork restaurant down the road. I wanted to. I wanted to tune out how Kelly had dropped her kids off at soccer practice an hour earlier and was just loving this clear weather, but alas, I could not.
In the square, people surrounded me. They sat on a bench, eating ice cream from the local creamery, their feet swinging beneath them. They ran around a flashing cart of commodities for children, catching bubbles that floated from it, popping them as they filled the air. Children dashed back and forth, smacking a balloon up in the air repeatedly among them, terrified of it hitting the ground.
These people — how could I cynically ignore them? Each with their own separate, important lives, barely riding the barrier between happiness and sorrow. It was just so… human. Small things they all did, trivial yet packed with meaning. Cute little gestures — beauty from a million individuals.
Salsa music floated from a Cuban restaurant, where a couple danced outside with clicking heels and dress shoes. The man spun the woman around, flashing his eyes to hers as they chuckled at the move. A different couple, much older than those two, slow danced alongside them to the 4/4 beat. The man touched the woman’s graying hair, pulling back a strand to get a better look at her face. With joy, they kissed each other, telling a years-long story of love.
I’d had that once. Lily and I had gone on cruises, explored mountains, and conquered the world — but where was she now? Could I find the waterfalls hidden among obscure hiking trails without her? Could I lounge in hot tubs with a piña colada without her there to criticize me for ordering a virgin one? Despite myself, my vision became blurry, and it began to rain on a clear spring day. Somehow, with no clouds around, the water dampened the space around my eyes, flowing into puddles that remained from the showers the day before.
I’ve visited hundreds of cities and shops in my time, I thought, but not quite one of them is the same without you.
I couldn’t stay there longer than that, I’m disappointed to say. When only one man on the street is caught in the rain, eyes turn, attention is held, and pity reverberates through the air. I walked quickly from the square, classical music playing from loudspeakers I passed downtown as I made my way back to the bridge. I almost smiled as I heard them. The piano and violin were playing a piece of dynamic masterpiece.
It was Lily’s favorite song.
It started sorrowfully: slow melodious notes, dragging like an anchor against sand. The piano rode highs and lows, building to an unknowable conclusion. Yet as its sound echoed, notes reverberating through the streets, the playful violin slowly joined, encouraging the piano on an adventure. Together, they played simple, bittersweet melodies, like remembering joyous memories. The two instruments explored them together, swells and leaps like splashes of blue and pink.
Yet eventually, the song drew to an inevitable conclusion, the piano clinging to the violin as it faded, refusing to let go. Like a final duet, they had played together — an embrace that wrapped around my ears — but as the sound of the violin faded, the piano exploded into a deep, unknowable grieving. It lingered in the street as the song concluded, seeming to quiet many times before finally, alone in the speakers, it moved on, leaving me in silence.
When I made it back to the bridge, I expected the sky to be as dark as the waters, but when I arrived, I found this was not true. Instead, the sky was illuminated by a moon and stars that reflected on the river above the other side of the bridge. A lily-colored light was replaced by one of white, and after all the time I’d spent walking, the beauty did not fade.
I gazed out at the stars and moon, transfixed by that beauty. I had thought it would be gone. I had hoped that it would be gone. But instead, it was still here. The fading colors of the lily had transformed into something new — and to my dismay, that newness was also beautiful. Incredible, intoxicating, beauty, like a dopamine injection to my brain.
Despite everything, it was still there: The beauty of the environment, the beauty of humanity, the beauty of the shattered glass that had been my wife — remnants reflected in my vision through all the things I could see.
I looked into the waters, and the freedom that they would bring — and I was scared. I had found a flicker of hope in the eyes she had left me.
Damn it, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t join her in those waters.
I lounged against the railing of the bridge, thinking, but no longer contemplating. The lily in my hand felt heavy as I held it over the river. In the darkness of the night, it no longer felt right to be in my hand. It belonged somewhere else – somewhere I couldn’t reach. I didn’t need it anymore. I shouldn’t have it anymore.
It was time to let go.
So I released it over the river, watching it float down in unseen air currents into the void below. The water on this side of the bridge was much cleaner, the trash being swept away, and the illumination of the moon showing a clearness that I had not quite expected to see. A second wind blew across the river, and as if by some miracle, the budding trees shook, their flowers picked off of their branches.
The petals landed in the river, surrounding the lily as it was carried below, joining it in a spectacle I couldn’t believe my eyes had the luck to see.
The rain around my eyes did not dry. I had the sinking feeling that it wouldn’t; Not for a while anyway. Yet despite the emotions that swirled in my chest, the sadness that invited my tears to flow, or the grief that weighed heavy on my lungs, I looked up at the sky and smiled.
In small moments, and drifting time, she’ll fade away. A whisper in my memory, dust to the wind. One day, I’ll wake up and not think of her at all. Her smell, her skin, her face, or her hair. How she jumped up and down every time the doorbell rang. How she loved to read thick chapter books by the window in the rising sun. How she’d give me a farewell kiss on the cheek every time I used to get takeout. How she’d wait for me after work, still beautiful in baggy clothing, and how I used to pick her up by the waist, carrying her like rose petals to the bedroom.
Then again, she was still with me. She always would be, and I would find her in every beautiful thing I encountered, but as my life continued, the pain would dull. Those days I shared with her would be replaced by new ones, and they would be distanced from the present, becoming something only in my past: Just beautiful memories of a time long ago; distant feelings of a place that I used to call home.
I glanced at the lily as it disappeared beneath the bridge, and rubbing the wedding band on my ring finger, whispered my last words to the flower.
“I love you, Lily. I always will.”
© Chase Wootton
Chase Wootton (he/him) was born in 2004, and after that, it didn’t take long for him to start writing. An avid reader, he fell in love with the craft of storytelling at a young age. Not satisfied with traditional contemporary modes, his pieces specialize in emotional impact and poignant, exploratory work. While usually a writer of speculative fiction, he enjoys writing in all genres and pushing the boundaries of any given story, reflecting the human experience in its highs, lows, and everything in between.
Find out more on Instagram @chasewoott.
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