Double

There are stupid women everywhere--
thick as pigeons on every sidewalk;
if you step on one she will try to lift her snapped neck
to kiss your boot heel and make it better.

I am not like them,
any more than a tigress is like a turnip.
I am nothing like those women laid out on the berber, weeping,
as if they were human carpet runners in the rental house of Love.

I have perfected the art of being solitary.
I cup my hands under the good sturdy faucet of just-enough.
You can lean on my doorbell all day, caress it like a clitoris, 
but I will stay in the far room, as bored as a blind Burmese.

Once, though,
in the months after Us,
when I spent my time plying puny needle and thread
building swaying rope bridges to find my way around the bomb-scatter of my heart,

I wept for you like a child.
I kept your last message on my machine until a power outage erased it.
I took myself for long walks and was jostled by strangers
who hurried through and past, like bad news from a Ouija.

Sometimes they looked like you,
and I would coo to them,
from my broken throat
like an imbecile.
_____________

for Karin's "entwin(n)ed" prompt.