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| Photograph: Remy de la Mauviniere/AP via The Guardian |
The city had warned us
about the weight of promises:
the civil engineers, our parents,
one parapet of the Pont des Arts
predicted this would happen.
Five ounces for two lives
padlocked to padlocks
an exponential mass
on an iron grill,
and when forever
proved temporary, no one
returned for the divorce.
No one dredged the Seine,
a bed of discarded keys,
for the one they jettisoned
the summer their lives
brimmed with youth.
Let us dismantle this
monument of hope,
scatter and melt the
seven hundred thousand
moments we dismissed
the weight of a symbol,
when we thought
that steel could represent
the fickle carbon of our hearts.
Scot Ehrhardt is a teacher and writer from Baltimore, MD. He has appeared in Little Patuxent Review, Lines + Stars, Tidal Basin Review, and Infinity's Kitchen. His first book of poetry One Of Us Is Real is currently looking for a home.