this week mistook your watching yourself for coyness      last night
confinement looked like the way you might have

before wiped off my stomach with a towel

it’s peculiar enough to make me think of your mouth
as a cow get its throat cut on a movie screen

for which you will not forgive me
with teeth worked in unfamiliar directions

and eyes wide-awake and twitching strained
these requests we make on each other that fail to keep

which remains there knowing it might could turn us to someone else