When I touch the coin you gave me you're there, tossing sticks for bats to swoop at, high into the thick humid air as we walk along the river path near the iron bridge on the late summer night. What you tell me is true: the bats fly at them, deceived. They think they're alive, dance all directions, chasing nothing in the dark. I remember another time, even longer ago, dark summer-night again, your father screaming words like sticks he would use to beat you. His anger something alive. I was waiting for you at the door—the dense air thick with lies—I saw then what was between you, the true hatred between you, was the only bridge. I wasn't used to that. I thought family love was a bridge that would carry me over the bad world, over every dark place in my life and I suppose that for me it was true. But you had a family where love was harm, home only sticks, so you got away, where you could breathe the air freely without them, where you could study a way to live. Before you fled the coast where I still live we left magic in the silent woods there, coins to bridge time—the silly statues you'd made at camp—we left them to air in the forest rains at a cedar's base, buried their feet dark in the loam. Strange things to set among the sticks and leaves, but they were a way to make your leaving true. The stories of our adventures are wild but true even if new friends can't believe the tales. We live different lives, but something between us sticks no matter how long we're apart, we're able to bridge the time like nothing. We know the secrets, know the dark parts of each other's lives, know how to make them disappear like air. One night in a church courtyard, you sang me an English air about a woman promised to a boy, how their marriage became true, but of course he died. I know it's a tale that's dark but beautiful too and it helps me to make sense of how we live. That song, the statues, small things that are gifts to bridge all the changes, the years, the hates and loves—they're what sticks. They're stubborn as we are, and as true. They're the gathered sticks we throw into the deceptive air, the coin you gave me on the bridge fingered rich with memory, dark with age, that we spend to live.© Neile Graham
First published in Grain magazine