Sixteen-year-old Audrey is pregnant and scared to death. What she chooses to do next will change her life forever.



BRIDGES OF
SENTIMENT
Music sweeps me into a hurricane of history.
Three beats of intro and I’m whisked to a past long dormant.
My skin is electrified and my heart beats in sync, hurtled through time to a place once called home.
A voice rises and sinks, catching every wave, like a ship sailing vast swollen oceans.
I’m dashed against bridges of sentiment, rhythmic verses and melody so sacred I can only surrender.
By the time I arrive at the port of summer in the year we met, I’m weather-beaten, sea-sick and starved.
Stepping onto the wharf of country fair, fading sunshine warms my bones, grassy fields steady my stride and the smell of hay bales nourish my depleted soul.
It was here, at the age of newfound freedoms, I was seen for the first time. Where an invitation to dance caused our bodies to collide. An accidental fate?
Under the canopy of fairy lights and a thousand stars, you pull me close.
Soap and cigarettes. Striking and strange. I try not to step on your scuffed leather boots.
The present was ours. Three minutes of now. Then a voyage, undertaken by innocence.
Forgotten lyrics roll over my tongue and fill my mouth—your lips tasted of Bourbon and coke.
The guitar fades and the winds return.
A memory for a lifetime, made a lifetime ago.
Don’t let me leave, let me stay a while longer, the crickets have just started to sing.
Now, replay the song and turn up the volume—one more dance for the long-suffering.
The End
© Michelle Upton
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