For Children

Lucie Fleming

Littered with Lights

2012 9th-12th Grade Poetry Winner

It is dark and we are on the Brooklyn Bridge and
we are old enough, alone enough, and
we are being independent together-

Big strides carry us between ropes and beams and lights.
Look through the cracks:
We are above the world, below the world.

We are amongst feet of different paces;
faster than thinkers;
slower than racers.
Boards vibrate beneath us, the
wind and wheels make our hearts shiver-

We are two big kids alone at night
marching to Manhattan.
Hear the beams hum and rattle with the rush of
tires passing beneath.
Massive water forms a net below and if we should fall
like acrobats on a trapeze,
ribbons of river woven would catch us.

Stopped-
We are shrinking, shrinking until
we are just two little lives like the
little, little lights in lots of little windows,
each of which holds a life-
big tall buildings surround us; holding
people we will never meet
stacked on top of one another.
My ribs are humming with his hand hovering
over them,
reminding me that we are not babies:
bend me back against these lights,
hold me over the water and
let me look at the sky-
two shivering hearts
against bodies without names.