The Oxidation of Memories

The girders groan beneath the weight of unspoken years, shedding flakes of umber into the river below. A slow combustion of elements without fire. The bridge remembers every footfall, though it no longer carries the tread of the living.

Wind weaves through the skeleton of the mill, a hollow whistle through fractured glass. We built monuments to permanence, forgetting that stone and steel are only temporary agreements with the earth.

Now the ivy takes its quiet reclamation, green tendrils mapping the faults in our design. What we leave behind becomes soil again, a silent, rusted testament to the brief, bright arc of our intent.