Other Story

My aunt, beer-warm and loose, thumbed through her phone,

a blurry grid of faces, cheap-lit glee.

'Your dad's other one,' she said, and left alone

that image, a stranger looking out at me.

Not quite my eyes, but something in the chin,

or maybe just the angle, the soft light.

A life I've never touched, a different skin,

a whole narrative outside my day and night.

And I felt nothing, just a dull, cold ache,

for all the stories I was never told.

Another branch, a path I didn't take.

Another coin, from a different, shinier mold.

Just a pixelated ghost, not even a shade.