Bridge

If you looked closely, you could still see the shape of the bridge, as it had once been.  Over a hundred years ago, someone had looked upon this very same river, and devised a plan both practical and elegant to span the flow.  In those days, the details had been as carefully thought out as the structure; a wrought iron swirl here, a flower there, to blend the work into the landscape, to bring as much pleasure to look upon it as to walk over it.  The iron groaned again.  The red and white warning tape fluttered in the wind, its flimsy line holding back a crowd of curious onlookers.  Like a huge animal that had been infested with parasites, the bridge was now covered in padlocks.  All shapes and sizes and colours clung to its old black iron, and when they had run out of room on its flanks, they had started on each other, layer upon layer of bulbous metal ticks.  It was not picturesque here anymore.  There was no graceful arch, no people ambling along in the sunshine.  There was only the sad moans of the old creature in its death throes.  They hadn't meant to destroy it.  Just to leave a mark.  But now that special place, that graceful walk over the river was gone.