It’s not just twins, identical,
who feel this way
(thinking as one),
same-egged, conjoined,
deep life-long linked
till hit and run –
or old age in my case:
not twinned, but fathered,
equally bereft.
Death, it seems, the fiercest
raider of identity,
for the survivor too – self’s theft.
Once genetic double,
mutual-celled;
equalled, answered, met –
you were almost only goodness,
I’m the damaged bit that’s left.
Isobel Dixon’s fourth collection of poems, Bearings, is published by Nine Arches Press. Her pamphlet The Leonids is published by Mariscat.
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This article appears in the 10 Aug 2016 issue of the New Statesman, From the Somme to lraq