linear time

Boxes. Squares or rectangles. Edges clearly defined, markedly separating. No space between.

Lines stacked up one atop the other, 30, 31, 28 or 29 deep, buffered apart with no loss of contingency of containment of consistency of contiguity.

Ticking off the days, each the exact same shape as its predecessor as its offspring, did you catch the resemblance to prisoner time? Hash marks : four lines run through with the standard fifth, all over the walls and ceiling and furniture. For a week, let's use six marks with a seventh crossing, but this is not standard and may confuse the jailer.

How do I know if? That is, do I treat this life as though it threatens unspooling inevitability? Inseparable from this form and its history, this era, like you I pretend living is choice even as happens, it simply does.

(Mind blocks that knowing. Trained to do so from early childhood. Dwell in distraction. School's where we learn the discipline of dissociation.)

May I show you? That's a lie. I ask no questions. You have, no questions asked, with or without confession, your own knowing of each day's particularity, the edges between yesterday and tomorrow equally and assuredly undefinable.

Perhaps I’m really here.

Then perhaps here is its own freedom.

Then perhaps I can put down this terror :

That this doesn’t count. That this isn’t reality. Or it’s a lesser reality. One I'm not part of, not fully. It’s possible that I am a ghost. It’s said that I am / not a ghost.

Even as counting the days equates to skin and bones. confined containing creating continuity, eternally externally complete.