The Bridge into Eternity

Midnight opened over the crossing
like a book forbidden to the living.
He entered, carrying the last remnants
of a life he had mistaken for his own.

The phantoms waited in the distance,
each one a chapter death had declined to read.
Their garments stirred in the dark,
and the years gathered around them
like mourners at an unmarked grave.

He turned toward the world he knew.
The road had vanished.
Only the endless passage remained,
stretching through a darkness
that seemed to have existed before creation.

He walked.

One phantom bore the sorrow of a lost love.
Another held the face of his forgotten youth.
A third offered the terrible sum
of every hour surrendered to fear,
every tenderness abandoned,
every life he had been too frightened to live.

The dead required no confession.
Their presence alone was judgment.

Farther along, a final figure waited,
dressed in the blackness of the grave.
He knew that figure,
knew the terrible recognition
of a life approaching its conclusion.

It was himself,
released from every illusion
that had sustained him.

He crossed the final stretch
and waited for the world to end.

The bridge continued into darkness.

From the opposite distance,
another traveler appeared,
walking toward the phantoms
with the solemn certainty
of a man who had mistaken
the beginning of his journey
for its end.