the babysitter

When you leave for the evening —
card games, parties, office things —
it is your wife's closet
I go to first.
She's got great
taste in shoes.
I glisten under
her expensive
make-up,
stroke her perfume
behind my ears. I smell
like her, like this. Your baby's hands
fumble for my nipples.
She gums my pinky while I rifle
around in your drawers. My hands
go anywhere they want, and I learn
so much: your wife's diaphragm
(who uses a diaphragm?)
in her underwear drawer, your porn
stash under the bed, there's pot
in the bedside table.
You are so American,
I could see you on TV,
some movie about some guy
driving the babysitter home.

You wonder what I know, here in the blink
of the turn signal, but I won't tell you anything.
My closed mouth is so young, if you listen
carefully, you could hear echoes of breast milk.
Already I know so much:
Why you're driving a little too slow,
how the thought of touching me makes you lurch,
a drunken car on a winding road,
how you will go home and trace me
on your wife with your mouth
and she will be grateful for your ardor —

but for now, we are still in the car.
Your fingers are smooth and damp on the wheel
and you are in your head, you are 20 or so, there is no
baby seat in the back and it is our first
date, dinner and a movie. You want to know
if I had a nice time. "Of course," I say. "Did you?" You're
broken. No one ever asks about you — and you did, you had
a great time, want to do it again, all of it, bad Chinese food and all,
see the action figure kicking ass 15-feet high while your thigh presses against
mine in the flickering dark, and you'd do it all again to get
to this moment, with the shock
of how soft my face is, how you're surprised
by the stubble on your cheeks, that's where you are
when you pull into my driveway, barely remembering
not to kiss the babysitter good-
night. I take your money and I'm
gone.

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