The gates groan open
iron scraping against iron,
a sound that lingers, heavy as breath in cold air.
Boots scuff the pavement, slow and deliberate.
Hard hats dangle from calloused fingers,
swinging like pendulums counting lost time.
No one speaks.
Inside, the factory sleeps.
Belts sag, arms droop,
the great machines slumped in their silence.
Oil pools in the grooves of the floor,
catching the light like forgotten prayers.
Dust settles where hands once moved.
Across the river, Detroit feels the hush.
Warehouses swell, ribs aching with excess,
frames without bodies, axles without motion.
A forklift stirs, grumbles, falls still.
A man checks his watch, then nothing at all.
Steel once moved like breath between nations,
seamless, effortless,
now it sits, weighed down by numbers,
the cold mathematics of a border re-drawn.
In a Toronto aisle, bourbon slumbers,
its amber glow dulled beneath a film of waiting.
Orange juice cartons, unchosen,
line the shelves like rows of unopened letters.
Ketchup stares out, red and unblinking,
price tags slashed and rewritten in thick black ink.
Under white-hot lights, a podium gleams,
its edges gripped, steadying the weight of words.
“Canada, the 51st state!”
The crowd erupts, a wave breaking,
then receding, waiting for more.
A shrug. A smirk.
“As if rivers could be bent like wire,
as if forests could be unmade with ink.”
In a quiet chamber, voices sharpen to steel.
“Absurd.” A single word, dropped like an anchor.
A tie is straightened, a voice turns to iron.
“Sovereignty is not something you buy.”
Beyond closed doors, maps lie unfurled,
borders traced like careless sketches,
lines drawn with the ease of a flicked wrist.
A whisper,soft, reverent—
“Imagine.”
Back in Windsor, weeds press through fractured concrete,
roots patient, unbothered by fences.
Lunchboxes sit untouched.
Boots wait by doors.
Detroit’s warehouses breathe dust,
forklifts slumped like tired shoulders.
The border stretches, taut and quiet,
a wall unseen but felt,
thicker than steel, harder than pride