kids will be skeletons

kids will be skeletons someday so it's a sin to lie still, right? but you must, at least once, under a satellite or a star, drifting through the sky, on shaky steel, riveted and solid, above an incomprehensible fluidity, the mighty mississippi's endless tide, black sky dissolving in light pollution, behind an endless stream of cars, below, the river less roars, more pours, from the north, southward, to new orleans and beyond, to become a gulf, becoming an ocean, felt ourselves becoming as we lie still on rickety steel, rusty beams pristinely vintage, acid worn, dissolving like the sky, so that every footfall is a victory, every step a challenge to the structure, and when the bridge does not collapse you feel relieved, and you save up all your breaths because you never know which one might be your last, so that when you lie still under the stars on a rickety bridge above a river, against a backdrop of cars, you'll be alive, and not know why, and each time you remember, you'll sigh, sending your breaths downriver, away from the pain of knowing, the breath inward which rejoices, the breath outward which cries out, the breath inward which receives, the breath outward which projects, your breath, a whisper floating downriver, amongst the eddies and whirlpools, turning the river over backwards in rivulets, seen from above like strands of hair washed white in the sink, and the foam is thousands of celebratory bubbles cheering on the river's progress, intoxicated by the chemical contents of the water, detritus of our consumptive desires, and the shore is my hands caressing your liquid skin endlessly, all at once. lie still and feel the brick platform beneath rumble, watch upside down the lights shine upward on the steel above you, passing in their own time, set to the rhythm of the train, hopelessly pulled forward over the tracks by locomotion, a daze in the headlights of the train, a crazed look in the eye of every lamp lit down the caboose, and there's no one watching but you, as your lover hides her head in your chest. she's not scared, she's just unimpressed. or it's irrelevant to what's going on in that chest, the lungs expanding and collapsing with each breath, rejoice, reject, as the heart pumps, thumps, stumps the logical mind with each beat, steady, increasing rhythm, therefore hypnotism, therefore movement, and the stillness is broken, and you move with the stars, falling endlessly, clutched tight to each other through space; you flow with the river, float swiftly just along the surface and succumb to the intoxication of contrasting borders, above and below, when a loss of breath is, of course, death, and your arms flail and you scream, or pout, but bite your lips to keep from crying out, clutch tighter in the fall through space, hold tighter hurdled along straight, like the train, illuminating the night, bright as you bounce along, crazed and dumb, to have finally left all doubt behind, to be leaving in every moment, fleeing as you move forward, the vision always new, the perspective always changing, you look above, to the stars, you look below to the river, behind you the cars, and before you know it, the train, and you bury your head in your lover's chest, to hear their heart defy the roar, dare it to beat still more, beg it to be bold, implore the one you hold, as you sigh, sigh, sigh rivulets in the sky, galaxies riveted to night by stars, which shine, from this distance both steely and divine, at least sure of their place, a part of a structure, too large to comprehend, and you lie still on the steel structure of which you are not sure, holding tightly onto a person, people being of stuff which is anything but sure, but still you clutch, and trust, with pure naive trust, childlike logic which keeps you clutching onto this chest stuffed full of uncertainty, nothing but probability all around you, keeping you from the improbable river, bubbling with a consumptive lust, which you sigh against, breath inward, breath out, quicker as you clutch, breath inward, breath out, because kids will be skeletons some day, but that day for damn ain't sure today.