Toes Untouch The Overpass

The 1st second: 

Anxiety.

I check the setting sun in the sky and try to tell the time like a boy scout from shadows cast by bridge beams. 

 I swim through the hot pink and creamy oranges of day turning to night.  How beautiful state changes are.  That's what this is, a state change.  I am the purple night sky melting into the yellow remains of the day.

I am a wad of dough braving the oven to come out as bread.

I am dry ice sublimating in the hot sun.

I am ice cream dripping into liquid down a child’s sticky fist on a summer day just like this one.

Endorphins flood my system, my brain purging all the happy moments of my life in one glorious stream of chemical vomit.  I see my first two-wheeler bike.  I remember the first time I drank Southern Comfort in the basement of my childhood best friend’s home.  I see the carnival where I first rode The Roundup and, tilted on my side protected by g-force, I first got my taste of flying.

I see other things that didn’t happen.  I see a prom dress, a limo, dancing cheek-to-cheek.  I see trophies.  I see infant hands and milk-teeth and baby blankets.  I hear wedding bells.  The wedding dress wouldn’t fit me any better than the prom dress would have.  The milk-teeth would have broken my skin when I tried to nurse.  I see my real life as it should have been.  I see my life if somebody better than me had lived it.  I see this better life and regret only that I hadn’t made this choice sooner.

I'm swimming in the golden sky, my prize rushing toward me like the future I do not want.  The water glitters.  I see a sea of jewels.  I see arms spreading to welcome me in their embrace.  I see the ghosts of everybody who jumped before me curdling in the deep blue.  

I am reminded of my days in the rain at the bus stop on the way to my crappy dead-end job.  I would fantasize about the bus smashing into the stop and smearing my mediocre body across the blacktop.  Now I feel like I am waiting for that bus again, knowing it is going to strike and take me to where I really want to be.  

The 2nd Second:

Monotony.  

You cannot un-make a choice like this.  

Behind me I can hear car engines and the Top 40 playing through an open window.  

They say the wait is four seconds.  Four seconds is an unbearable long time to wait between choice and consequence.  It is long enough for regrets, but that is what life has been anyway.  They say things about permanence in that condescending way.  

They talk about pain being temporary, choices being permanent.  It is all noise now, just chirping birds, because misery is the only thing that is permanent.  

Happiness is temporary and fleeting.  

Happiness drops faster than I do.  

Happiness has stones tied to its feel and a rope around its neck.  

Happiness is at the bottom of every body of water.

Happiness is just past the safety rail of every bridge.

Right now I am the happiest that I’ve ever been.  Everything I want from this life is rushing at me and I cannot wait for that glorious embrace.  I am waiting, waiting, waiting.  I have spent my whole life waiting.  Now the wait is ending and I have as much to show for it in the end as I did at the start.  

I have nothing.  

I am nothing.  

But right now that is all I need.  To be nothing, to unmake myself, to erase the disappointing thing that was taking up the space that defined me.  I am body without soul and soul without body.  I have never known true escape like this.  And now I'm just waiting for those golden gates to open.  I think that must be where the bridge gets its name, because we’re all just waiting for those golden gates of paradise to let us in.

 The 3rd Second:

A bird flying free from a cage. 

 A rabbit escaping a snare.  

A chick pecking its way out of the brittle shell that holds it.  

This is flying.  

This is freedom.  

This is hatching.  

Spread my arms so God can fit my angel wings.  Let him take my measurements for that white robe.  Let him put the call in to sign me up for harp lessons.  I’ll fail at that, just like I did with the piano.  Just like I did with the violin.  Just like I did with the drums.  

I am not musical.  

I am clumsy and the hands that couldn't move fast enough for an instrument killed countless fireflies by grabbing them too fast out of the air and leaving luminescent slime all over my child-hands and I cried at the Fourth Of July barbeque because all I'd wanted to do was make friends with what I thought was a little faerie.  

Now, through my fingers, the atmosphere rushes.   

My hair flies out behind me like the tail of a kite.  

I am flying away from all of you. 

The soul does not drop at the same rate as a body.  Gravity cannot pull the soul down.  Only cruel words could do that, and let me tell you the words were cruel.  The body is really only dropping to where the soul already is.   The body is only catching up to where the soul has been for years.

The 4th Second:

Barely a splash. 

I hit the surface and come undone.  

I become only flesh and bones like Pinocchio.  

I become an empty thing puppeted by waves of the San Francisco bay.  

I become a footnote headline.  

I become a traffic jam.  

I become a million commuter’s miserable drive home.

I become just another Golden Gate Bridge jumper.

Four seconds was the longest wait.

Four seconds was the longest wait.

Four seconds was the longest wait.

Four seconds was the longest wait.