Looking Back on My Libido
It wasn’t love; it wasn’t even sex—
that mad motor thrumming from below,
sending out a single wave the length
of me, its surge thrilling every organ
into obedient synchrony. Then, my eyes
saw only beauty; my ears heard
only the rarest intellect; my hands
brimmed in prayer for the one
necessary touch,
That wave gathering every sensate
part of me into one obedient motion,
a school of fish trained toward
the luminescent other, all
toward, toward, until—
until some discordant
foible glimpsed in a sudden
clearing returns the wave
to its inexorable ebb, time
after time, after time.
Libido,
now a vanished curiosity,
how much of my life
I gave to you
thinking it was love,
thinking it was me.
Plume:
