Girl doppelgangers

they were facsimiles of one another
their images would have spat at each other

alas the lasses never met: x lived in one of those
fashionable east-european capitals, with castles

y lived in one of those upwardly mobile northern
english towns, sheffield or something. the only time

their paths crossed was in a caf? where the coffee
smelt of b.o. , and though she doesn't recall the event,

x got a shufti at y's hair, and liked it. There's nothing
significant about what y, at the time, saw. no one can

be sure if they were down to a metaphysical wonder
or the simple sacrifice of a mother, but it is noted that

when x was run over (by a fibre-glass rat of a car) that very
moment, five cultures away, y felt something like the stomach

cramps of crohn's disease, collapsed like a dodgy deck
chair to her knees, writhed around, tear-squirted the ground.