We nurse our secrets
and their suckle hurts.
Since birth the two top teeth
are white and keen
as science in fluorescent
light. Our shirts
are wrenched; the shamed
breasts tend mastitic, mean
all night and febrile
when those pink lips purse
at two am
to drop that guillotine
of appetite. Of course
what’s most perverse
is that it would burn more
to tell, to wean
the creatures off
our silence—milky blue
and warm, a carnal
dribble at their chins.
Each leaks a cry
so innocent and thin
that only we, attached,
can taste the ooh.
Behind the latch, as sharp
and sweet as sin,
the hard mouth needs us,
and it feeds us too.