The Realm of Possibility

If I tell you something startling, do you promise not to swoon? I nod, and watch the orange peels fall to the river. I've gotten him a ring, he says. It wasn't until Jed that I understood how a person could be disarming. I have spent years of my life sitting in my room, creating defenses of cynicism, darkness, and bleakness. Jed's friendship is the skeleton key to my fortress. He disarms me every time. Let me see it, I reply. He hands me the open orange, sections pulled back like petals. He wipes his fingers, then carefully reaches into his pocket. What emerges is a claddagh. Two hands, one heart. I have seen the rings before, but never like this. Never held between two fingers instead of worn on one. Never in the windblown sun, never so high over the water. Never so close to me. Two hands, one heart. Do the two hands belong to two different people? Are they holding their love in common, keeping it perfectly balanced? Or do the two hands belong to one person, giving the heart as an offering (take this, it's yours)? At that moment, a truck speeds across the bridge. It comes dangerously close to us and shakes the false ground that we sit on. I am jolted forward, into the rail. The orange falls from my hand. And the word I think is precarious. Because as the bridge rocks like a beast with a tremor down its spine, as I pitch forward so close to the air of no return, I am struck by how precarious it all is. How the things that hold us are only as strong as the faith we have in them— you go on the bridge because you trust it will not fall the fingers will clasp because we trust them to. You need two hands to hold a heart. The tremors subside and I look over to Jed. He is ghostly pale, but the ring is still between his forefinger and thumb. He has held on, because he could not consider letting go.