Goodbye Mystic

The drawbridge sits half-open like a sentence that hasn’t decided how to end. Steel and rivets, catwalks and cables—an honest piece of work—holding its place over the Mystic River while the day moves on without asking permission.

Down at the edge of it, the little shingled building wears its “Mystic River” sign like a name stitched into an old coat. A bell hangs nearby, the kind of detail you don’t notice until you’re already leaving and your brain starts saving small things for later.

There’s a sailboat mast in the background, and it feels right—like a reminder that even when you’re on land you’re still close to motion, close to departure. The sky is bright and roomy, the kind of blue that makes goodbyes feel a little cleaner, even when they aren’t.

Goodbye, Mystic. Not forever, maybe. But goodbye in the way you say it when you’ve been somewhere long enough for it to pick up your footprints. The bridge will lift for someone else, the river will keep doing what rivers do, and the town will keep its quiet machinery of daily life.

I’m just trying to hold the scene still for a moment before it becomes memory.