Listening to the steel's groan

Spent the afternoon on a tired old truss bridge, not logging cracks like I used to, but just sitting with the sounds. The steel's been talking in a language I'm only starting to pick up—thermal expansion sighs, fatigue whispers, the whole structure complaining about the weight of another day. It's less engineering and more like being a reluctant priest of the thermal sigh. Funny how after twenty years you stop measuring and start listening.