Parallel

You are my terrible twin.
We were knotted together even as I slipped,
womb-blinded, from the darkness into light,
the cord severed.

We will always be as Janus was,
selves torn between the ancient face that looks forward from the doorway
and the young one that looks back, into the shadows.
different sides of the same shiftless coin.

No closeness has ever felt further.
No mirror glitters so cruelly
with false promise
as the one you hold up for me, alter ego.

It is because you left me,
that I cannot relinquish you,
must needs carry you
like a dog-eared copy of a sad book I do not want to read.

Pushed over by a careless hand,
choices tumble like dominoes, maze-makers,
staking out a future I struggle to claim.

When I was small you laid your head
upon my chest, listening to my heart
as if it were the only sound in the world.

Now, from far, I trace your faint presence
as a cardiac monitor might mimic a waning pulse,
needle ready to mark a small final
endpoint on spooling graph paper.

13.11