We Walked Bridges Just to Burn Them

Sanjana Rajagopal

The marriage of
your head & my heart
—always a union destined for failure,

still,
I once knew Happiness
in other forms.

I knew
grasping for fistfuls of time—
time with you—
on the trains
and across tables

—when your eyes
flickered with the fire
of a candlepoint—
unraveling into
gothic glitter
distance and différance
—I knew you

And I knew
to gate-crash
to watch you collect my turns of phrase
and laugh in that way of yours,

I knew to stroll through Little Italy
hoping to run into you on the street corner

I knew those days would never come back
—when, with a simple shared look
you turned the silk of me into
pleated folds of sunlight
swirling through the sky
like a golden skirt in motion

and I wed myself to you
in the crypt of a broken dream
weeping forevermore
that we walked bridges just to burn them.

---

Sanjana Rajagopal is a third year philosophy Ph.D. student at Fordham University in New York City. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Augment Review, Poetically Mag, Northern Otter Press, The Confessionalist Zine, Anser Journal, Ayaskala Mag, L’Ephemere Review, Dwelling Lit, Stone of Madness Press, and more. You can find her on Twitter @SanjanaWrites, and on Instagram @astrangecharm.

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