What I Recognized

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.