Where The Rever Ends.

***The Bridge Between Us*

The first time I saw her, she was standing alone on the old stone bridge that cut through the center of town. The wind toyed with her hair, sending loose strands across her face. She didn’t brush them away. She just stared into the water below like she was waiting for it to speak.

I might have walked past — just another stranger — if she hadn’t turned her head. Her eyes caught mine with such quiet certainty it felt like she’d been expecting me.

“Do you ever think about where the river ends?” she asked, no greeting, no introduction.

I remember blinking, caught off guard. “I guess I haven’t.”

She smiled faintly, like my answer made perfect sense. “It’s strange… something can keep moving and never really arrive anywhere.”

And that was how it began. No names, no history. Just a question hanging between us like a thread neither of us wanted to cut.

For the next few weeks, I saw her almost every evening on that bridge. Sometimes we talked. Sometimes we just stood there, watching the water slip away. She told me little pieces of herself, never the full picture — how she collected postcards from places she’d never visited, how she liked the smell of rain on concrete, how she once read a novel backward just to see if it made more sense that way.

I didn’t know her last name. I didn’t know where she lived. But I knew her laugh — the kind that seemed to belong to another era, soft and unpolished.

And I knew that my days started to bend themselves around the thought of her.

It was mid-October when she showed up without her usual coat, shivering under the weight of the wind. I offered mine. She slipped it on without protest, the sleeves swallowing her hands.

“You don’t ask much about me,” she said.

“I figure you’ll tell me what you want me to know,” I replied.

She studied me for a long moment, as if deciding something. Then she whispered, “I’m leaving soon.”

The words landed heavier than I expected. “For how long?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe for good.”

That night, I walked home slower than usual. The streetlights felt colder. The river, darker.

The next day, she wasn’t on the bridge. Or the day after that. For a week, I went every evening, standing in her place, half expecting her to appear like a trick of light.

She didn’t.

I told myself it was just someone I’d met by chance. That it didn’t matter. But the truth was, she had threaded herself into my days so quietly that her absence felt like missing a heartbeat.

It was early November when I saw her again. She was at the far end of the bridge, suitcase beside her, wearing the same coat I had given her weeks ago.

“You came back,” I said, breathless though I’d only walked a short distance.

She looked tired but relieved. “I couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.”

I wanted to ask why she was leaving, where she was going, if there was someone else waiting for her. But the words stuck in my throat.

Instead, I asked, “Will I see you again?”

She bit her lip, considering. “Do you ever think about where the river ends?”

It was the same question she’d asked me the first day we met.

“Yes,” I said. “Now I do.”

She smiled — a real one this time, warm enough to make the cold night seem almost gentle.

“Then maybe,” she said, “we’ll meet there.”

And before I could answer, she was walking away, suitcase wheels rattling over the stone.

Winter came. The bridge gathered frost, the river slowed under sheets of ice. Life pulled me along — work, friends, the mechanical rhythm of days. But I still found myself standing there sometimes, watching the current, wondering where it carried her.

Months passed. Seasons changed.

One early spring evening, I was crossing the bridge when I saw something taped to the railing. It was a postcard — a photograph of a small seaside town, the sky painted in shades of gold.

On the back, in careful handwriting:

*Found the river’s end. It’s beautiful. Wish you were here.*

No name. No return address. But it was enough.

I slipped the postcard into my pocket and looked down at the water, flowing steady beneath me. Somewhere far away, it had found her.

And maybe, one day, it would carry me there too.