Wandering through a new city,
 I come upon a bridge:
  its rails loaded with locks.
   They call them "love locks."

It gets me wondering how many locks
 long outlived the love they memorialized?

How many were lust locks --
 linked to the bridge before 
  the couple really knew each other's
   vexing peccadillos?

How many were like ill-advised back tattoos,
 a lover's name - someone one met in Vegas - 
    and whose name one wouldn't
       otherwise remember, 
     were it not inked across one's spine
        in a 120-point flame-festooned font?