Distraction arrived in familiar lines
today. I have seen that sorrow sunlit
before, the same shadows cast
in shorter framing. Different
troubles given different form
upon such similar faces, your
manner not so mercurial, less
care taken to cultivate
appropriate answers for
every situation. Unfair,
perhaps, to imagine you
less deft or deliberate,
but your hands lack his calluses,
& I've yet to see your restraint.
So I look, instead, to your eyes:
not a silver sheen of tears, but
the welcome warmth of melancholy,
a peculiar variety of mine.