I caught him in the hallway mirror looking back at me,
wearing all my clothes and all my posture perfectly,
but something in the angle of his jawline was not right,
something in the spacing of his pupils in the light.
I blinked and he was synchronized, I raised my hand, he raised his,
I turned my head, he turned it too, his mirroring was flawless,
but when I held completely still for five full seconds flat
he kept on moving half a beat, and I cannot explain past that.
The other me is learning all my habits and my tells,
the other me has memorized the routes and parallels,
he sleeps when I sleep, wakes when I wake, eats and drinks the same,
but he has something in his eyes I cannot put to frame.
I started marking myself, small cuts along the wrist,
so I could track the differences in case I was dismissed,
the other me had all the marks by the following night,
he had done them on the same locations, same depth, same width right.
I told the woman that I see and she listened real well,
she said I had a hard few months, that stress could ring the bell
of perception, then she paused and looked at something past my face,
and I could see her recalibrating to the space.
The other me is learning all my habits and my tells,
the other me has memorized the routes and parallels,
he sleeps when I sleep, wakes when I wake, eats and drinks the same,
but he has something in his eyes I cannot put to frame.
Last week I broke every mirror in the house,
swept them into trash bags, worked through every room alone,
by morning there were mirrors I did not own upon each wall,
and he was standing in them very still, reflected in the hall.
He has gotten better at the lag, I almost cannot detect it,
I almost trust the reflection but I cannot quite respect it,
because twice I watched him smile at a fractionally wrong time,
and something wearing all my features looked back through the rhyme.