Lines

by Benjamin Grossman

assemble and disassemble us. They look in the mirror only after they’ve broken it up, because if we saw where that first line was drawn then perhaps we would know where to draw the others. But since we don’t know, all we can do is draw a streak across the sand and place our toes upon it, hope that the lines in our blood gravitate away from the line of fire. But those curved signs fill our heads when we think on this, not lines per se, but rather question marks, those malformed lines too ugly to be in the line of vision. Should my palms cry more when walking on the line or crossing over it? A poet worries over nothing else but lines his entire life and the aging do the same. But are the lines on our faces really the same as the ones on the paper? Is the fishing cord in the water the twin of the invisible equator? And if lines are just puffs of air why do they get us high? Maybe at some point we’ll have to decide whether lines are offensive or defensive, and when we do we should tell everyone over the telephone. But it seems the more time we waste thinking about the history of lines the more lines we’ll find upon our own history.