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by Cheryl Walker

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You turn a negative into a positive with a

Line.

Not the crooked kind you would draw between us,

Cracks running deep into the earth like thirsty rivers

Wandering through a scorching desert.

Not the ones laced with walls of stone and hate,

Riddled with guns and southern winds you would keep out.

Not the [invisible] ones forging paths for vagrant bullets

Piercing heads and lungs and hearts.

Not the ones scratched across time in permanent ink,

Punctuated by telltale labeled dots,

Rewriting history [years in advance].

Not the hyphen that creates halflings,

[Un-]American in all but name.

But a line untouched.

Free of composing angles,

Free of opposing sides,

Free of imposing circles,

Free of supposing oscillations.

Perpendicular arteries, flowing down through branches,

Plunging [many-armed] myths into eternity.