“Recognition,” by Kate Clanchy
This one could be a girl I know but somehow younger.
Something like this has happened to me every time I’ve traveled or moved someplace totally new: I’m in a library, train, pub, museum–some crowd–and every person in my periphery is someone I know. For a split second. Until I look. Which I can’t help doing over and over. Sometimes I’ve made other people look too, my swivel-head has been so pronounced.
Is there a language from which we could steal a word, schadenfreude-style, deja vu-style, for this reflex? Or for the frisson of disappointment and nostalgia that comes right after, when you realize you’re still among strangers? (Frisson? Nostalgia? Not quite it.)
Anyway, I like “Recognition” because it means I’m not the only one.
It’s in Kate Clanchy’s book, Slattern
Belly up, it's A Poetry Feed. 
No, you are not the only one, though you are a one and only! Yes! I’m amazed how often this happens. (Sometimes I wonder if it is wishful thinking.) I wonder about the way we categorize by eyes, size, form, memories etc.. I wonder at how God created us so alike, yet so uniquely different. And I keep wondering.
Wishful thinking, for sure, sometimes. But equally often a real, low-grade fear of not having gotten all the way away. And sometimes sheer, vertiginal disorientation!