Losing the Plot

the Discovery Bridge

After dark, the cars race across the bridge like it’s a speedway, 1,590 feet of straightaway on the new bridge spanning the Missouri River called Discovery after Lewis & Clark because they stomped all over the place round about here some 220 years ago, here being Yankton, SoDak (134 businesses named after Lewis & Clark in Yankton alone), the bridge three blocks from your sister’s house, aggressive aftermarket muffler drag racing that woke you up, now you’re staring at the ceiling fan whooshing your breath back into your mouth 

          the hot rod roar quits abruptly

          and every person, every runaway drunk high schooler, every high and broke 32-year-old fopdoodle bro dating a runaway drunk high schooler stopped their cars and got out, stepped off the slope of the bridge to the banks of the Missouri and walked into the river that only goes up to their knees

          and the river said white is the word in the black night

          those humid high school evenings of your own that shuddered into confusion or forgetfulness, back before we discovered who we might become 

          the future weeps out of that past

          it’s mid-March now but very warm in Yankton, 81 degrees, no crickets yet, the 40 tulip bulbs your sister planted last fall peering out of the soil into the sun’s false spring

          you looked at your phone, 3:15 AM and that’s too early to be writing this, hungover from meds and general lack of sleep

          these were the last days of your father’s life 30 years ago, the blizzard just starting, you were happy to be home that night even though sick with mono

          and as a child, middle of the night you searched the dial's single-channel signal static on a blue plastic transistor radio, searching for a station and some human voice telling you it will all be okay

          just wait

          when you were seven years old on your bedroom wall after goodnight you saw three people, a family of shadows like cutouts from black construction paper, about four feet high, very sharp shadows, round heads and long upside down triangular bodies

          and they were there on the wall, the shadow family, but no light source throwing them up there, your father tucked you and your sister into bed and closed the door, TV muffled in the other room

          your sister in the other bed not sleeping either but you never told her about the people on the wall, how could you explain the shadows not fuzzy-bordered but strikingly in-focus

          your family already suspected you were losing the plot so you didn’t tell a soul

          they moved, the people – there was a father, a mother, and a child – you knew this somehow – they glided along the wall, back and forth, just a few feet to the right then to the left, keeping you sleepless and so sharp you cut yourself to the quick

           a prayer stretched taut in your throat

but hang on, why is the shadow-family now suddenly projected on the wall of your sister’s house after 50 years of occasional remembrances and why did it just barge into the metaphor you were making way back about the drag strip of the bridge? and were you hallucinating even then when you were seven? were things so bad that you in your constant panic created this silent cutout family with no faces or mouths that could yell at anyone

and this was supposed to be about the bridge and those assholes in their souped-up cars racing across 1,590 feet of straightaway and the roar and whine waking you up in the dead of night and somehow your father’s in here too 

but I can’t find him for all the din this narration makes