We face each other, straddling
the rail of the Burnside Bridge²:
Portland's heart of stone. We hover
as the South, cold-blooded, flows into the North,
as traffic pulses East, then West.

He used to straddle me, probing my entrails for a center.
Blood would rush to my ass, hoping to feed him soul-nourishment.
His cock an umbilicus, omphallic.
We'd rock like mother nursing child until milk flowed.
But the milk was ever his, and I the only one nourished.

Now he sits here, thirsting.
But not for my embrace.
He has a thirst for water.
And heaviness of heart makes him slip from me
and into the Willamette.

My heart
falls
with him.