MIANUS RIVER BRIDGE

Amanda Chang

According to my orchestra conductor, on a particularly foggy night in June 1983, a section of the Mianus

River Bridge collapsed into the watery depths. Despite the urgent warnings of a goodhearted man from Georgia—who had noticed this catastrophe unfolding and, having parked his car, entered the fray—disgruntled drivers honked their horns before plummeting to their deaths one after the other until hundreds were submerged in currents. Resounding crashes, amidst the ripples of hysteria and the sirens of paramedics, were silenced. He was exaggerating the extent, perhaps unknowingly, of the damage—his mind murky from decades of tragedy-bound headlines and disquieting phone calls in the early hours. Yet I believe that there was a semblance of truth hidden between the folds of sorrow: how far we have fallen to let Death take the wheel long before we ever learned to steer.