Music Box

Grinding her teeth in the dark and wearing
a tutu like yellowed azaleas, she waits

on her side, wearing down the logic
of cause and effect — the natural order,
this time or next, she’ll overturn.

Is it the music that moves her,
the uranium light that opens her
into a pirouette apropos of anything?

Turn the little key till it stops
and her shiny black sky flips
over to a mirrored wall —

past which she slides again and again,
her eyes seeing nothing in the mirror
but your face and the light through her legs.

She turns and turns and measures her breath,
she’s learned how not to get dizzy with this
by whipping around to fix her gaze

on a single point perhaps your face,
the look of love, but there you go
smearing from side to side like a smile

you wrap around her hips, which are slowing 
now, losing the signal. Your face
breaks up like a flock of starlings.

She’s starving too, but her mouth wasn’t made
to open. Before the sun wanders off
with the idiot music, she wants you,

more than anything she wants you —
come closer — wants to whisper
a path to your ear, who opens

your box, who opens your box