Liked to Watch Me

Out walking, it comes to me: I have known
at least two men who liked to watch me
sleep. I would bet cash money God
never looked at me once, alive
or dead, or before I was alive. But two
men I loved, a year apart, would go
up on one elbow—
the elbow one of sexual love’s
best friends—and look down, and I wonder what
they saw. They said they saw, in my strange
visage, beauty, and something they called
sweet. Did I seem childish, to them, was there
something unprotected in the greedy way
I gave myself, awake? They said they would
gloat, in gratefulness, that I
was in their bed. There was never a good
dream, in my head—they did not see that—
they saw the winter rivulet
of alpine hair in moonlight. I think
it’s what I’d always wanted, and had not
imagined I could have: my flesh
itself, and my troubled features, to be
liked—adored. And since the doubt
in my irises, the woods-green-brown under
overcast, was not visible,
my matter could be loved in my spirit’s
absence, or I could keep my ill
spirit out of sight, behind my
well matter’s veil, I could do it in my sleep.