Once the rope had been canary yellow, not softly romantic, but instead a nineteen eighties angry neon. Either it was new a long time ago or it had been used for the dirtiest tasks imaginable. The outside was a sickly greenish brown, the only hits of the original colour shining through like poorly cleaned up glitter.
When I think of rope it's something to tie a bike to the flat bed of my truck with, something about as thick as a finger. Here on the docks though they'd call that a piece of string I'm sure, their rope is more like the girth of my forearm and I'm no princess if you know what I mean. They wrap many times around the galvanized projections and then hang in that semi-taut way they do to some ship of gargantuan proportions. On a calm day like today they seem about right, but in some gale even they must seem about as safe a kite on a cotton-candy string.