Cousins

We may not be of same mothers
But we share the same grandmother

Our bloodlines meet and then separate
Just like our features are faded carbons

We emanate from the same family tree
Trunk is the same yet, our boughs are free

Your environment is quite unalike mine
And we are as different as chalk and cheese

Your comfortable background made you a brat
And my middleclass values caused many a spat

We were friends and foes during those sweet and
Sour days of summers spent in grandparental retreat

Then days became months and months became years
We became not so mature adults and made our careers

Next came our marriages and we left our nests to live
With chosen partners and all was hunky-dory n festive

Soon your stubborn intractable nature tore your life asunder
You left for filial arms to lick your wounds and wonder

I stuck it out and dug in amidst heartbreak and compromise
As pride and parental duty forbid me from doing otherwise

You are now your own person and live life as you please
And I have my own kids and extended family to appease

All in all we did not do so bad, life is part happy and part sad
Recriminations gain nothing, going with the flow isn’t so bad

After all those years gone by, we are now strangely close friends,
As we are cousins after all and this is how our story happily ends.
Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.
-H. L. Mencken
1880-1956, American Editor, Author, Critic, Humorist