Nude Woman on her Back with Legs Apart

after Auguste Rodin

I am a woman's mouth, painted shut.

There is movement in the corner,

your muttered words full

of the weight of night.

This has nothing to do with me.

A person, oddly, remembers

hay motes in sunlight , her little sister’s

eyes like a chemical burn,

drab non sequiturs of purity.

I won’t say I, but a woman,

any woman, can feel you looking,

instinctively knows the stroke

of the brush that halves her.