Fernanda Cooperstein

I find it hard to fathom, even strange,

that someone should choose to share a name

that I have been more or less forced to bear.

I remember the day,
(though a little hazily),

when I asked the former Ms. Casal if she would like to keep hers,

or take mine
when we married. And she chose mine!

This person, who decided all those years ago

to relinquish those five letters for my eleven, 

can on occasion seem so known to me

that she can appear unrecognizable.

So I wonder, as I press these keys,

if the repetition of seeing the same person
often intimately, for more than fifteen years,
justifies this idea:
that knowing so well might also embody the inverse,

where I comprehend that much less
in perfect proportion?