Pam, you are
a splitting image
of Linda
but you think
you look just like God

Every lover after
will beg for an explanation
for the raised scars below my navel
for my balancing acts above the overpass

How can I pronounce your name
without saying too much
without getting drunk

Even now,
everyone is tired
of me
slipping you into the conversation
swirling you into my watered ***
and spilling you on their carpet floors

I found your Olympic gold medal
while I was cleaning in my childhood bedroom.
I almost vacuumed it up.

I can’t help but wonder how it got on my floor,
How you must have not noticed its disappearance from your empty apartment.

I wonder if during one of those fights we used to have
I slipped it in my pocket, thinking you never deserved it.

The medal sits on my old desk by a trick dog coin bank.
The dog holds the coin in his mouth,
jumps through the hoop and hides the coin in a brown barrel.

This childish desk is a circus.
I can see the levers and
your Olympic gold medal is fading in the sun.

There will be
A pink scar
on my
index finger
from a cut
I got a few
weeks back
when I tried
to open your
beer bottle
with a kitchen
sink-stopper
in a hotel.

The deep cut
was a flesh trench
you filled with
lime juice
when you pierced
and drained
the fruit with a
small red
coffee straw.
I have many scars
but this one
will be my favorite.

Her body is a third world country
starving for attention