My Doppelganger

We don’t meet often

and that’s okay--

it’s hard to meet yourself,

harder still when your twin

looks some 50 years younger

and relentlessly reminds you

of all the mistakes you made

in your time of insouciance

and good looks when you got

pretty much whatever you went

after—girls, jobs, friends…

and all of them you left,

sooner or later, one way or

another...until that day you

were completely alone,

with madness pulling you

one way and death the other….

My doppleganger knows all this

because he was there, he has

always been there and now I

know I should have asked him

for help—but before I jumped,

before I took that leap not of

faith but despair, I did not, no,

could not believe him real and

so I did not know he was my

endless being, my atom of

eternity, my lost soul...