Expansion Joints

The traffic is a stalled river of glass.

Below us, the canal is the color of a bruise,

sluggish and thick with the runoff

of a city that never washes its hands.

The girders are the only honest things left.

They don't pretend to be light.

They hold the vibration of a thousand idling engines

in their rusted, interlocking teeth.

I look at a single rivet near my door.

The green paint has flaked away in scales,

revealing the dull, stubborn iron.

It stays.

Even when the heat makes the road swell

and the concrete groans to find more room,

the steel just takes the weight

and waits for the light to change.