The Footbridge: a short story. This was a finalist for Witness Magazine's 2023 literary fiction award. For my paid subscribers only.

AKA the prequel to my published short story, "Pride." AKA the first chapter of a novel I started in 2003, revisited and beefed up in 2022. Hope you enjoy!

“There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us. Just as you were about to step on it, I asked you: ‘Do you want to cross the footbridge to me?’—Immediately, you did not want to anymore; and when I asked you again, you remained silent. Since then mountains and torrential rivers and whatever separates and alienates have been cast between us, and even if we wanted to get together, we couldn’t. But when you now think of that little footbridge, words fail you and you sob and marvel.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science 

New York, October 2003

 “Let’s go to Vermont and get married,” Lin says. “So I can get U.S. citizenship.” As my fingers run past Woolf, past Dickinson, “People pay four to five thousand dollars now.”