Gantry Prayer

[Verse 1]
The MacArthur Bridge sighs in the August heat.
She watches his thumb trace the wear on the bolt head.
Every silence between them has a measured tolerance,
a quiet so heavy it could shear clean through concrete.

[Chorus]
This ain't love, it's torsional yield.
Something holy in the grain of the steel.
A failure point you pray to feel.

[Verse 2]
Heat off the riveted steel burns through her jeans.
He looks at the river, the freighters moving slow as grief.
"Don't look down," he says, and she never does.
Her whole body is angled to his center of belief.

[Chorus]
This ain't love, it's torsional yield.
Something holy in the grain of the steel.
A failure point you pray to feel.

[Bridge]
All that latent force, the friction and the grade,
becomes a kind of worship in the shade the gantry made.

[Outro]
Just the hum of the bearings in the late afternoon heat...
And from her mouth, the quietest—