The Trouble With Empathy

She reads me like a book, she says; each twist

And turn she follows with a knowing eye.

She finds her tips too tricky to resist:

Her sensitive antennae never lie.

Like the Hatter analysing Alice,

She furbishes philosophy with farce,

Determined to detect a twist of malice –

But whose reflection through the looking-glass?

The sad-eyed linguist’s certainly well-red,

Impervious to amber or to green;

In spite of what I think I might have said

She always knows exactly what I mean.

     She reads me like a book and likes to quote

     My thoughts; except it’s not the book I wrote.