I was wrong about the bridge

By Ezekiel Kingsbury
At the beginning of the semester, I wrote in this very publication that walking across the Powerhouse bridge made me want to kill myself. 

Before I repent, let me be clear: 

from January through mid-March, crossing that bridge did make me want to kill myself. 

If it weren’t for that gate lining the bridge that doesn’t let you hurl yourself into oncoming traffic, I would have died around Valentine’s Day. 

But lately…

The sun sets in the West. 

When I first arrived in Beloit, I was seventeen and furious. I stayed resentful for a long time.

As Beloit College students, we are the rats of North and South, scurrying up and down from class to class, heads down, blind to the river yawning beside us, blue above. 

I forgot the Rock River. I forgot the sky.

I find myself pausing now, just east of the bridge at the very edge of Aldrich field, stuck. I stand there, and I stare at the sky. 

The clouds sag so low over the Rock River, you’d swear you could touch them. They drip down like molasses. Geese break into laughter, some inside joke, some dumb secret, winging their way toward a bleeding pink horizon. The sun, dying for today, casts a light so fierce and pure it dissolves every despondent impulse, every sin until you are nothing but bones (going home is awful). And all around me, my peers hustle past, laughing, smiling, texting, off to bed, off to class, their television, their weed, their fellowship. 

In one month, I will leave Beloit forever. I will follow the sunset back west, to the wide open plains, and I will be home for the first time in four years. In that time, my dog died, and my sisters grew up. My dad shaved his head. 

This place is not my home, and it has consistently conspired against me. But between the beautiful people and the clouds and the freezing mornings, it has rooted itself in me.

In Chapin Quad, you thought you saw the sunset. Yes, you saw that smokestack, rising high above the Aldrich roof, but did you really witness it?

So long as it keeps being sunny, I will continue living simply for this. I cannot tell you what I will do if ever a cloudy evening comes.

Featured image: Vivian Kopka’27