Why is it that men–I should only speak
for myself now, but a woman once told
me the same thing, so I can't help but hold
it to be true, whatever you may think–
are mysteriously allured by those
women whose mouths are always in a moue
of dissatisfaction? Could it be true
that such men think, in taking off her clothes,
 
he could be the only man to make her
smile, as if his hands alone could conjure
up the delights of the flesh she has missed
in her relationships with other men,
who never is fulfilled, though often kissed,
whose disappointment makes us try again?

A wristwatch is a handcuff, it shackles
you to the consciousness of time; likewise,
time is no longer free to fly about
on its own; it is attached at the wrist
to your body, to your heartbeat's tattoo,
to the inequalities of the breath,
and to the slower, subtler cranio-
sacral rhythm that very few of us
 
notice, fewer even than those who note
the lopsided rhythm of the heart, man
slogging up a steep hill with a wounded
leg, favoring it, spending as little
time with pressure on it as possible,
shackled in his case not to time but pain.

She retains a sparkle in her eyes still,
but she is little more than a light shell
of her former self. How much, in the skull,
determines the person we are, or shall
become? She can eat a meal and not spill
anything, retains enough of that skill
and enough control so she doesn't soil
herself–none of that embarrassing smell.
 
If the eyes are the windows of the soul,
she stands there, inside, leaning on the sill,
watching, unable to name, a squirrel
undulating through trees, as if a spell
had been cast, pricked herself on a spindle,
and wordlessness covered her like a shawl.