Resemblance

Here I am in Grammy's flapper swimsuit,
ankle deep in the Meramec River, coy,
vamping for the camera. And though I know
she had this face first, the clear hand
of genetics, still -- it unsettles.

Whenever I meet new friends, invariably
they say to one another, Doesn't she remind you
of ...Jerry's old girlfriend? Or some woman
at the office, an old college roommate,
that waitress at the Mexican place.

My step mom tells me, There's hundreds of you
on the streets of Dublin. Wasn't that me,
there, disappearing into the revolving door
of the Hotel Borg in Reykjavik?
Once, getting a haircut while in college,

I swear I saw myself at the opposite end
of a long row of chairs. Counting the mirror,
there were four of us. I wanted to bolt,
but knew it would only be a question of time
before I ran into myself again elsewhere.

Forgive me. I have to ask --
do I remind you of someone?
I imagine holding a reunion, like that club
for women who hate being named Lois.
We could have it at a bar where they check IDs,

watch the bouncer's face for a reaction.
Will he see the resemblance? Will we?
Perhaps an older me will show up
and I'll find out if it was a good decision
not to color the hair. We could trade clothes.

Will we like each other, or be appalled?
Love your neighbor as yourself, Jesus said.
Maybe it's meant as a blessing, this prism of our resemblance --
our crystalline bodies, our parallel faces, the faintly
familiar light we bend back into the world.