I stared down your hollow hall. Lined with what looked like static stars in a sky divided into fourths. Your beams spending summer swelling, spitting beads of sweat from bubbles, an uneven topography.
***
“—,” you said softly, less than expecting a response. I stood and shuffled soles on your pock-marked and dull skin, waiting patiently for
“—,” you interject. Still soft but close. Your breath-hot hands around the back of my neck.
***
Your history is well-documented and recorded in detail. Your origin and ingredients are public domain, traced in books and binary. But what happened in your alone is anyone’s guess. What of hours added on hours and all your days spent set? Generation on decade on year on month on week on day on shift on hour of shuttling all comers to a living, to a home or to love. Filling that hollow, hot hole settled under our borough’s running racetrack river.
***
What about me, stood in the fountain-turned-flood of time allowed by your leaking roof? Wet, weary and remaining. Waiting for your leading wind or your distant glow. Pacing still in place.
Your signs say stay.
“—,” says my pad away.
