WHEN LINES COVER LINES

How easily the
New routine slides back
Into the old one
Just for the one day—
You go out the way
You have been doing,
But then you change course,
Walk an avenue
Not your usual,
Though it used to be
(That last part is key,
So you retrace steps),
And it brings you to
The building you knew,
In through the same door,
Up the same staircase,
Into the same rooms,
And so on, and so—
What you do makes sense
Like a palimpsest
Whose layers you wrote
Deliberately
And in memory’s
Darkest, boldest strokes
And muscle flexes
Now tracing over
The one while making
Out the other one
So both sets of lines
Describe what might be.