It starts with recognition’s comfort until
your rapturous hello retreats
into a questioning look,
becoming disappointment that I,
supposedly another me,
am not the me you thought you knew.
I’ve learned there is a doppelganger, my
look-alike, out there, six or seven
of another me, shared genes and all,
creating not an apparition but a self
who shares the facial features I’ve grown
accustomed to, but in another world with
friends and family used to that reflection of myself
embedded in routines not mine.
Spotting a doppelganger, tradition says,
swirls bad luck around you, but knowing mine exists
helps me feel more connected to this world,
to this all too big, impersonal, and, yes, disjointed globe,
knowing someone somewhere carries my features
– eyes set somewhat close, nose with a small deviation,
lips that are a bit too full –
still, each with our own fingerprints,
each with hands touching differently our lives,
our eyes looking out at
faces from our parallel worlds
as if my friends were yours, my family tree related
to the many branches that your foliage has fallen from,
that our twinning is, indeed, a way to bring the world
Into our hands, to cup each other’s face, to say we
could be similar enough to halve life’s pain and share
its grace, lighten it,
be it, me for you,
you with me, doubling what may become
joy for both of us.
DoubleSpeak 