The western side feels so loud. Voices layered over voices, expectations thrown like stones, people speaking as if they knew the shape my life should take.
The western side carried too much sound, judgment in every crowded room, pressure hidden inside advice, love measured by impossible standards.
I learned how to disappear inside noise. But crossing the wooden bridge changed something. The wood creaks softly beneath my feet, the river moves without asking questions and all the noise from the western side stays behind me somehow.
It’s quiet by the wooden bridge; I never liked the quiet before.
At first the silence felt unbearable. Like standing alone with every thought I spent years trying to outrun. But then through the stillness, one voice remained. Not louder than the world, just steadier.
A voice that never demanded anything, never asked me to become someone else, never turned love into a performance. It followed me gently through the quiet. Sometimes I walk the bridge at night just to hear it again.
The western side still hums behind me, restless and impatient, but out there the river swallows everything that doesn’t matter. And for a moment the weight of everyone else disappears.
No expectations. No judgment. No endless noise asking me to prove myself. Only the sound of water below and the memory of someone who once spoke to me like I was already enough.
So I keep walking the wooden bridge, long after the lights dim, long after the world grows distant. Because some part of me believes if I stay long enough in the quiet, that voice will find me again.
