About Me: Part I Poem by Adrianne Quinlan

Whenever I stop to do an about me,
nothing ever comes to mind.
It is perhaps because
I don't interact with myself
on any regular basis,
almost like the cousin you saw
only every other holiday in youth.

The son of your paternal uncle:
the giant of a man
who entered a room with a flourish
calling you, "Boss" or "Big Man, "
while giving your hair a toss
and your fingertips a whisper of a shake.

- Your spitting image
according to your two impassioned
aunts who together
share the normal visual acuity
of one person.

They ask each other to look,
as they simultaneously feel out
and pinch you both on the cheeks,
then declare to the room
that they can eat you up
because you are just so handsome.

They fail to see that your features
are exact opposites.

You glance at him
and he returns the gaze,
both acknowledging
the questioning smirk
on each other's faces.

Then one aunt finds your chin
and calmly tells you
that you have your uncle's eyes.

After a steamy shower
I gaze into the bathroom mirror
and wait as the mirror clears,
and it's like stepping back in time.

I see the extended family
in the dinning room at my uncle's house
in varying poses:
some in a half-laugh,
some caught with their heads tilted back
in the throes of a knee slapper,
one frozen with her fork, in midair,
on its way to her mouth,
each of my uncles
with a Guinness in one hand,
the kids running pell-mell around the room,
and on every adult face
is a happy expression.

My doppelgänger is sitting at the right end
of the family room sofa
chatting with my dad, the preacher -
a slightly smaller version of his older twin,
about the importance of faith,
and the Sermon on the Mount.

And I at the left end
deeply engaged in a discussion
with his father
about the prospects of Superman
becoming even more powerful
if he is exposed to a proportionate amount
of gamma radiation
as Bruce Banner did
when he become the Hulk.

Staring at myself,
it is clear to see
why I don't stop
to look at the man
gazing back at me now.

It's not that I am grotesque, really,
but, my head is twice the size of my father's
and sits atop a body that is two sizes too small.
My eyes are disproportionate to my face,
and although they are too small,
my pupils remain frighteningly large
like those of a shaman
in the jungle of the Amazon
at midnight.

But, despite my odd look,
I decide that I must visit
myself more often,
and each morning
in front of the mirror, now,
I pause to say hello, I
look out at myself
through my uncle's eyes
and I can see back
to the beginning of time
when life first oozed blindly
from new liquid-water
demanding to be fed.