Going Through the Motions Going

Up at the approximate correct time—the clock says something close to right.
Coffee before seven, check the back lock, step into the light
of the morning’s practiced opening sequence, the established run
of tooth and mirror and the choosing of the shirt—the done
and done-again of every morning laid out before me
like the worn path through the field where someone in a story
walked their whole life without asking what was at the end—
I walk it. I’m efficient. I attend.
Going
Going
Going through the motions—going.
The sequence holds without the showing
of the person in the mechanism, the ghost
inside the working—going through the motions, coast
to coast from door to desk to door, the calibrated grace
of someone who has memorized the space
they’re moving through without the need to feel it—
going through the motions. I can steal it.

I’m genuinely good at this—I’ll take that credit without hedging.
The performance is solid, the external edging
of a man who’s present holds up under the casual inspection
of the open office, the hallway, the mid-meeting question
about my thoughts on a thing I’m listening to—
I have thoughts. I deliver them. I do
the thing and then the next thing and then the drive back
and the door again and the evening’s different track

of the same going-through-the-motions—quieter,
less witnessed, the interior running at the quieter
register of the same unfeeling function.
The couch. The screen. The junction
of another day successfully completed and not felt.
The hand I was dealt.
I keep showing up. That’s real. That’s something earned.
Going through the motions. Still. Concerned.
Going