Writing Prompt:

Use an inanimate object as a personification of a social issue; feel free to use inspirations from historical revolutions or mdoern day issues of controversy.

The Bridge at Stillwell

The Bridge at Stillwell jutts out of the horizon on the back of a freight train.

Rust dances down metallic sides.

A road carving underneath it,

Is peppered with orange corns.

A sad, pre-spring grass curves

Where man has let it grow.

It is here that a trail of good people

Crouch down on their hands and knees.

It is the first landmark they’ll remember in the unfamiliar,

Undiscovered world ahead of them.

Soon it will blend in with the blurry commute across town.

As the houses lose fences,

Flowers and paint.

Last a horrifically lighted factory spouting pillars of gas.

It won’t be bad.

After all, they can leave when it’s over.

They park their cars on a thin road,

As though the houses around them

Won’t need the space.

And with smiling faces enter the club.

They speak with children who desperately distract

Themselves from homework, they play games,

And eat tangerines.

It is only after the kids are picked up,

That the good people blot everything past,

That rickety, soulful bridge.

Until they remember it

Exists without them.