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Straight from Roger's website:
"Call and Response is a photo-literary exploration devoted to the relationship between photographs and words. Using photographs from the Looking at Appalachia project, writers are encouraged to respond narratively to a single image in 1,000 words or less. We hope to use this platform to expand our community and encourage collaboration between photographers and writers."

Call and Response Guidelines:

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Photo Credit: Garnet Bruell. September 9, 2014 in Fayetteville, Fayette County, West Virginia.

The Tightrope Walker on the Midnight Bridge

The bridge, they say

The one as thin as a thread

Stretches almost a mile connecting the dark hollow below.

Suspended between the present and the past,

The smiles, the memories, the life you knew

It all comes down to this very moment.

​

This is no ordinary path, the locals say,

of steel and ties–

But a passage that breathes, that whispers, that calls

to those who need it most.

Each step you take over the railroad ties

tugs at your soul.

It begs you to reconsider, but you’ve already made your choice

and like a tightrope walker at the circus, you begin the journey across.

Each step over the ties tugs at your breath,

pulling the future you yearn for closer

and the past you wish to forget back into your hands

​

Cross the Midnight Bridge, they say, and you will meet yourself

from a time before your mistakes were carved into your skin,

into your brain,

into your reputation,

and into your soul.

Each beam bends like time itself,

each railroad tie a knot to unravel,

like the years and lies that held you together in place for so long.

​

The valley below is silent,

yet you hear the echo of your choices and thoughts.

You feel the weight of unsaid words and unkept promises

as they fall from your shoulders into the valley below.

​

To walk this bridge is not for the weak,

it’s for those who lust after a change.

It’s for those wishing to watch their past crumble into the valley below

as they balance and flutter across it like fallen leaves in the wind.

 

But, traveler beware,

the past is a fragile thing.

Not everything that bends can be healed.

Some steps you take forward here

can forever alter where you have already been.

 

So, the Midnight Bridge waits, patient and still,

an ancient guard standing watch

over lives half-lived and stories untold.

Its iron veins hum with days and memories forgotten.

It offers you no warnings, no promises–

only the chance to edit the pages

of a story you thought was already completed.

​

Fog rises from the hollow, curling around the scene like fingers,

reaching for an ounce of hesitation or regret.

On the other side, there’s a flicker–

a shadow of who you were before your world

changed you, shaped you, broke you.

Was that the authentic you?

Was it a stranger? A ghost?

The Midnight Bridge knows and it waits.

​

Each heavy step you take is laced with possibility.

Can you undo the moments that plagued you?

Erase the moments that tether you to trauma?

​

The air thickens as you near the center of the tracks,

Where past and present swirl, indistinguishable.

You feel the tug of what could be,

The gentle pull of rewinding days.

But the bridge knows:

It is never so simple,

The past was a mosaic of fragile moments,

Held together by threads invisible yet unbreakable.

​

As you stand at the edge,

One more step could change it all,

Or change nothing at all.

The winds whisper in forgotten tongues,

Offering riddles instead of answers.

Will you take back what you’ve lost?

Or lose what you’ve found?

WRITTEN BY HALEY DEVORE
Bio: Born and raised in Southeast Ohio, Haley DeVore has been creating stories since she was little but just recently began sharing her writing with others. Her published works include two short stories, “Meet Me in the Fluorescent Glow” and “The Book Cellar,” and a short collection of poetry titled Poems About You. She proudly calls Athens home.

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