The Architecture of Rust

An orange bloom upon the girder's flank, where yesterday the paint held firm, a quiet gnawing in the dampness of the fog. The bridge forgets its own rigidity.

It is a slow combustion without heat, the iron returning to the hungry earth, a shedding of the human shape, particle by fractured particle.

We build our monuments to last the century, yet water finds the hairline fracture, the unseen vulnerability in the steel, and reclaims the structure for the wind.