Upon Meeting a Dear Old Stranger:

I started with a cadenza.

Slow at first, complicated, filling
up space and rolling through my chest
and over the tips of your fingers, green,
blanketing us with familiarity of "we"
and the strangeness of "new."

And then there were notes that slunk
through tunnels in the brain,
melodies that slipped and twisted and wriggled
and wouldn't let up their nipping; electrical
synapses lined up in a squad with you
in their sights.

I got in my car and drove away from you
and the crippling knowledge
that my poker face was a mess of tells,
that each and every well-formulated equation
was suddenly filled with errors,
and I would never understand the pump and flow
of my own red heart
despite its monotonous rhythm.