You Knew (Him) Better The First Time You Met Him

You knew him better the first time you met him.
The first sight of his face and you recognized him instantly.
And when you first heard it, the sound and timbre of his voice,
Though not exactly what you expected,
Was exactly what you expected.

But then you meet a lot of people, and there isn't space in your brain
To store that first image of everyone
(and anyhow you could never have held onto that one perfect moment of knowing).
So to save space you took the aspects of him
That were sort of like the aspects of all the other people you meet
(who themselves weren't quite like that either),
And made yourself a model of him to hold on to.

The next time you saw him, you noticed he had a crooked tooth,
And that the cut of his hair didn't quite match the person you had modeled,
(and maybe he laughed a little too loudly and awkwardly).
And you thought, "oh, well he doesn't quite fit into my model of him,"
But you needed the model in order to hold on to him (and everyone else),
And so the thought became, "Oh, well. He doesn't quite fit."

And that would have been that,
Except
That years went by
And you were lucky enough to forget him.

And that next time your old model was long since lost
And you had again that one perfect instant of recognition,
The one you couldn't hold on to,
That you held on to just a little bit longer this time,
Long enough to realize that you knew him better the first time you met him.