Figures and Lines

My hard bed creaks as I shift around in it uncomfortably.  The digital clock on my bed stand reads “2:39” in neon green type, but those numbers have no value to me.  They’re just figures, like “$12.76/hour” or “rent”.  They’re just figures to me.  That’s all. 

I turn myself and look at the square tiles hovering above my head.  I notice that when one of them ends, its line segments continue flowing on in order to form the adjacent square.  Then those same lines keep getting crossed over, never again touched by the same lines as they were before.  Everything except for the line segments themselves are temporary.  Every event, from dropping out of college, to visiting a millionaire brother, to being presented simply by their father as the daughter “who lives in New York City” without specifications, to working night shifts at the bar, is temporary.  Those line segments just continue to go on.

The lines never are forced to deal with permanent discomfort, because they know that change is inevitable and will occur soon enough.  Those fortunate lines belong to nothing and no one, considering that they cannot stay in one place for very long.  But, of course, every quarter has both a head and a tail, and the case of these segments is no exception.  These lines can never turn back, because they can only travel straightforward.  They can’t fix any mistakes.  The segments can’t go back to the year of 1998 and keep themselves from dropping out of college.  They can’t grab their past selves by the shoulders and beg—“There is no going back, Abigail!  Once you turn away, you turn away!  Why do you have to do this to yourself?”  

After all, well over a decade ago, those line segments had been so ambitious and passionate.  They had worked themselves to their limit, spending every night studying opposed to partying, or working instead of sleeping.  Those lines had received a diploma at the age of sixteen, and a free ride as an art student at Columbia University.  Then, it was those lines that couldn’t keep up.  It was those lines that decided that an independent career as an artist was the correct way to go, and that it would provide all that was needed without a lot of conflict.  It had been those lines that slowly passed through their intersections.  Success was, for them, only one tile.  That tile had been passed, and the lines couldn’t go back.  They weren’t given that option.

Instead, those lines had to watch their life crumble to pieces.  They had to watch as their older brother made his way to the top of the field of chemistry.  Those lines had to go to all of the dinner parties, all of the weddings, and all of the holidays, as others praised and bragged about him.  And while his lines had a billion tiles of success, the other lines had a billion tiles of failure.  They had a billion tiles of cheap housing, a billion tiles of abusive relationships, and a billion tiles of economic poverty.

And because those lines only live in the present, they have no usage for figures like “2:39”, “$12.76/per hour”, or “rent”.  They have no reason to acknowledge them.  What’s to separate “2:39” from “2:40”, “2:45”, or maybe “7:06”?  What’s to stop them from hopping out of bed and ripping the clock’s plug right out of the wall socket right now?  Nothing.  What’s to stop them from leaving this apartment and its rent and moving in with some drunken, careless man instead?  Nothing.  What’s to stop them from quitting their job at the bar and leaving their $12.76 behind?  Nothing.  The lines just keep on moving anyways.