Raymond Luczak
THE LOVER
I don’t know how it happened, but somehow
the sight of graying hair had stopped putting me off
when for a long time I said ugh no thanks to older guys
but now that my hair’s turning gray too,
I’ve been rethinking the possibility of loving
a guy who’s middle-aged as I am, learning
to love the slightly sagging body he has
for I, too, have a similar problem
since working out can do only so much
to hide and disguise our telltale signs,
so when Jack said, Let’s go hang out at my place,
I wasn’t thinking sex per se,
but once we were in his living room,
the curtains opened to the afternoon sun
felt like the zipper between us
unzipping long enough to peel off
our t-shirts only to find us staring
into each other’s eyes as if we were
young again and yet not because
anyone looking at us guys would know
our bodies don’t have the same sheen
of youth; in fact, our bodies are tattooed
with aging spots here and there,
the skin around our pits have slackened,
our mound pecs have begun to droop:
oh God how he makes me feel
like a lovestruck teenager all over again.