Fished from the Seine

I am a rusty key fished from the Seine
by father and son. That is all.
I do not understand how I came to be
an international symbol for eternal love.

The act of separation,
me from my raison d'etre
eternally locked to a chain-link fence,
considered a grand gesture

between humans betrothed,
yet leaves my better half trapped
among those who suffer the same fate.
I am casually tossed—ME—

symbol of a promise sealed,
left to oxidize below.
The Napoleonic Pont des Arts bears
dangerous weight of expectations,

until I am filleted from gullet of a perch,
my love removed, locked away forever
at the seldom-romanticized Parisian public works—
a final insurmountable distance.