The Great Loves of Our Lives
Begin with the body
desire manifests itself in the body:
the flutter of the heart
the nervous shake of a hand
the dilation of the pupils
hardening of nipples
thickening of mucus
within the vaginal walls.
New lovers celebrate the body
reveling in hungry
explorations of the vast
expanse of skin,
each fold, each gentle
pocket of flesh.
The thick soup of fluids
that lubricate lovemaking—
spit and cum—
everything is sensuous
the body, a palace
of pleasure
for eager explorations.
I cannot imagine
any of this for my parents,
but this is how it began
with my wife.
I still remember
those days of desire,
the musky scent
wafting from every
inch of our skin.
If greedy, hungry
bodily lovers are lucky,
they will spend some inestimable
number of years together,
then, again it will be
all about the body.
The body and its breakdown.
This is where the bodies
of my parents enter:
the proximity of fluids
not the sweet, sticky kinds,
the ones that excrete
a leaky bladder
a lax sphincter.
The day my mother
comes home from the hospital,
after the surgeon amputated
all her left toes,
she cannot bear any weight
on her foot;
her bladder leaks.
Together, mother and father
learn to test her blood sugar
four times a day and
inject two types of insulin.
The body breaks down.
Love does not always remain,
but bodies bind us
their desire
their fallibility
their messy connections
to all that is human.
