The bridge, the water, and me. 


I’m staring down, neck craning and begging for whatever comes next. Whatever doesn’t involve me straining muscles to concentrate, to think. Like my hands gripping the side of the bridge, white knuckled and so close to letting go just from the roughness of the textured railing. My thoughts are running a marathon but my body stays perfectly still, afraid of the consequences of the rash decision I’m going to make. Up or down, pros and cons, life or death. 


But then you show up, inching your way closer. Afraid you’ll spook me and I’ll take a plunge to my bitter fate. I can’t see you yet, my neck is still screaming yet seemingly trapped in its current position. Though my mind slows, and I recognize that the water looks clearer than I thought — not the endless black hole I felt myself staring at moments before I heard your voice. 


“You don’t want to do this, you have so much life ahead of you, let me show you,” you say. And I believe you, legs moving before my brain is fully convinced. My body is magnetic, only to you. More confident in the fate you could provide than my sealed fate of the water.


You bring out the best in me, encouraging me in ways others never have. Bringing to life a whole new me, revealing the dreamer child buried inside me for so long. I chase and chase and chase those dreams, with you at my side. Guiding me to that better life you promised me. And for those next eleven months, I’m happy. I am better. I look to a better future ahead of me and think of everything I would have missed out on had I jumped all those months ago.


But then I become too much – like the leftover food on a plate that you discard, because your eyes are bigger than your stomach, and the thought of finishing what you started makes you sick. You’re bored. I’m annoying. You no longer care about my future, you’re too busy with the new things of your life to bother with a dreamer like me anymore. And so I bury her deep inside again. Shut her up so I can no longer hear the screams of the things I once wanted.


I leave late at night, so I don’t disturb your sleep. It’s almost muscle memory, like how a lost dog always finds its way home. The familiarity is comforting, and I repeat motions until I’m looking back down at the fate I can no longer escape. Because you won’t come this time. The texture under my hands is more slippery than last time, from the rain. I convince myself there’s just no grip, that it’s an accident. But the truth is, we’re the real soulmates, aren’t we?


The water and me.