The Long Way

The bridge is down.

I take the long way now.

Yesterday I saw neighborhoods

I don't usually see. The kind

you cross over without looking.

Behind the chain-link fence,

the river nobody thinks about

when they're crossing the bridge.

They're thinking about getting there.

The laundry lines. The parked cars.

The visible part that stays invisible

because it's not on the main route.

This is how the city is divided.

Not by walls. By infrastructure.

By what you're routed through

and what you're meant to pass above.

In two weeks the bridge will reopen.

I'll stop taking the long way.

I'll forget these streets.

That's the point of a bridge.

To make sure you don't have to stay.