I never talked to men
after sex, just got dressed
and left, but he asked me to stay,
naked like that on the bed—
even after we’d gotten off,
toweled off—so I stayed,
though I was afraid to see him
as a person: his face tired
in the lamplight, suddenly older
than his online pic. He pulled
a book from the shelf: Jesus
on every page, rendered in oil
from other centuries, hungry
and sad, scrawny and hammered
to different-sized crosses, or thrown—
full color—in a tomb.
What is that shade of blue? Look
at the detail in the hands.
He took my hand, placed it
on each slick image:
How did the painter make his eyes look like that?
What makes someone’s eyes look like that?