clearer than I have in years, it seems  I heard your voice speaking its narrative  close to my ear. How quietly and steadily it built. How it put one foot                                                            in front of the other in sand, on stone. In mud and dark and afternoon light. Nights lit with blue                            shadows on snow, the sounds of metal grinding on metal as trains  traced loops of flickering voltage through  the city. I thought                                         I could know you, those years  when I pressed against your length like paper  seeking an imprint of something other  than itself. And I did,                                               I do: though you  are always a few steps ahead, signalling for me to follow. But I don't know how you've come  to a place where you say                                                        you've learned to live  with what gives you pain—what seizes  tissue or nerve or flesh without warning,  sharp as a spike or sustained                                                                  like a note trussed to the next by a line that looks like a longbow. Monkey bridges span the gaps between                                          banks of rivers. Cables of suspension bridges are built to sway  in high wind to keep them from breaking.  I cross from one                                       end to the other,  trying not to look into the gorge;  trying to keep my eye on you.