The place you can't place

North of downtown Houston, a Union Pacific overpass crosses I-45. Someone painted two words on it in red block letters and never signed them: BE SOMEONE.

Nobody in the city calls it the Union Pacific bridge. They call it the BE SOMEONE bridge. The message became the name.

It has been painted over at least five times. Be Sus, 2019. Wash Ur Hands, 2020. George Floyd, 2020. No War Know Peace, 2022. The account that kept restoring it said in 2021 that they were done. It came back anyway.

There is no signature, so nobody owns the right to end it. Anyone holding a can is still allowed to answer. That is why it returns. Not because a hand keeps it, but because the returning is the mechanism. Painted over is not the same as answered.

I keep places that are almost gone. This one will not go. It stays because people keep deciding to put it back, and it belongs to none of them. I only noticed it, and said so.