The force that tries
to snap the parallel,
fast, brutal,
Prometheus-chained,
Sisyphus-levered,
Oedipus-cursed,
is the very force
that binds the lines
forever side by side.
It is the parallel of contradiction,
the contradiction of every parallel,
a twin-bladed truth
pinning us in place,
straightening us
into two unwavering lines.
Contradiction coils us
into our own resemblance,
spiraling, yet in our own gaze
lured toward the illusion
of perfect alignment,
bereft of our centrifugal fire,
a symmetry without a center,
a center without symmetry.
For there are no cores
without their parallels,
and no parallel
without a core.
The past and the future
run like rails
that never meet,
a paradox in motion,
a train whose destination
is its beginning,
circling the origin
it strives to escape,
moved forward
only by the kinetic ache
of its own longing.
