Think of your life as a line.
Maybe your line is a straight one
from Point A to Point B
or maybe your line is drawn
with an unsteady hand, jittering
or curving or veering place to place
until finally arriving at the end.
Your final stop. Terminus.

If every person is a line,
and the world is filled with lines,
it is inevitable that some of them
will eventually touch
or meet, or cross over.
And sometimes those lines will create
beautiful angles, pleasing to the eye,
balanced and fair and equal.
Others still might create harsh angles,
jutting, violent with sharp points,
unpleasant to the eye and to the touch.

But there is another kind, because
for every line to intersect, there can also
be lines to run parallel.
What makes parallel lines so unique is that
despite being identical
despite curving in the same ways
having bent and bowed and given identically
parallel lines are destined to never meet.
They are perfect for each other,
but because of this perfection,
they remain just a little ways away from each other
forever.

It’s simple math, really, that
sometimes things just aren’t meant to intersect.
Not the way we want them to.

How many lives are lived in parallel?
How many share curves and bends
that isolate them, that make them lonely,
unknowing that parallel to them
is something who understands perfectly?
Would that these lines knew of their parallel partners
that they might reach out hands
to reach across the equal spaces
and touch, however briefly,
in the middle.