SPANNING

This city lost in mist, grey as the cold statues of the dead we know
are dead just by touching them.
In this mist which looks like remembrance,
I cross a bridge between two boroughs.

I like this span of metal,
the arch and rigid grip of it.
How it holds the thrumming of trucks
close to its marrow, how they pulse up through my feet, a deliberate memory,
long after they've rattled past.

Strangers meet, slung between two points,
fingering switch-blades and nervous coins. All their furtive iconography of want,
like mileage counters clicking silently
on each blue-lit dashboard below.
Nothing holds me here.

In the wind, the hump-backed
frozen bones of concrete,
the stricken hypodermic of buildings,

I am remembering you.

I wish you could know
what my mouth tastes like now.
My lips are open, I am spanning.