Lines (December)

Words don’t come, lines stop before they start. Instead, I watch lines outside: lines of trees and fences and houses and clouds. The well-trained eye connects their slow changes, as stations pass. Lines of signs and windows and shops and cars. Their daily survival of repeat and compete. Lines of forehead and eyebrow and mouth and chin. Familiarity caught an instant, my face reflected, thinking such thoughts, then gone. Lines of midday and Wednesday and December and 2018. Dumb old diary almost done, always wanting names and lists and events and meetings, blank to the experience that words don’t come.