The Returned Response Received


My brother
the
Whirling dervish of the meet and greet
He is fearlessly social
and interactive with people
Far more than me
Being around his openness and honesty
unconsciously prompts me to assimilate
I am certain that he isn't trying
to bring me out of my shell
Yet to my surprise
it inevitably happens
This is a good thing.
I'm an introvert at heart
Searching for an opening to make a point
Pawing cautiously at the spoken ground
Hoping to turn over a rock for a conciliatory nugget
He plows ahead
Splicing his ground with verbal thrusts
Probing the air for the returned response received
A study in contrasts
becomes a melding of our two styles
Whole in a way that
singularly we are not
It happens so effortlessly
I don't realize the transformation
has taken place until much later
in the quiet reflection of my car
on the long drive home