More people have committed suicide off the Golden Gate Bridge
than anywhere else in the world.
Maybe that's where it gets its name.
The suspension between life
and the Golden
Gates of death.
My mother once told me
it was the most
beautiful place in the world.
It seemed that way in the blown-up
photograph that hung over our mantel.
Against the sunset, it was only
a silhouette stretching
out across the purple bay
reaching beyond
what I could see,
connecting one world
with another.
I was twenty-eight when I finally saw it.
I remember how disappointed
I was that the bridge
was red
not gold.
Orange Vermilion, my husband corrected.I told him orange vermilion
wasn't gold.
Maybe it was the most beautiful
place in the world but
I was only concerned with
how to hold
onto three kids
with two hands.
My husband figured it out.
He tossed our youngest over
his shoulders and took
the other two by their
fists.
As he pointed to the boats below
and Alcatraz ahead,
(and my youngest cooed at the birds above)
I stared into the disappointingly faded
shade of blue water and wondered
how many people it had swallowed.
When I was nineteen I tried to swallow a bottle of Aspirin.
I didn't make it
halfway before it all came back up.
Maybe it's easier to jump.
Halfway down your body
can't suddenly decide to come back up.
The Golden success
rate is ninety-eight percent.
Lamp post 69 is in the center
of the bridge overlooking
the bay.
That's where we stood
and watched.
56 people have died there,
leaped from that rail my daughter's
hand was curled around.
That's how they keep track.
Not by who you are,
but by the lamp post you were closest to when you jumped.
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