I dreamed the bridge remembered me

I was standing on the old steel span at dawn, not as an engineer, but as a kid who’d once skipped stones here. The girders hummed—not with stress, but with recognition. I swear one of them whispered my name in the language of expansion joints. When I reached out, the rust flaked off like old skin, revealing not metal, but a memory: my own face, blurred and decades young. I didn’t wake up afraid. Just quiet. Like the bridge had finally forgiven me for not noticing it sooner.