A Different Kind of Hunger

I miss having a woman
who knows when I'm full of shit.
Someone who can look at me
across the kitchen
and know exactly
what I'm thinking.
“This soup needs more cardamom.”
Someone to experiment with.
Argue with.
Sit beside
when neither of us
has anything to say.
Watch Dr. Strangelove for the
fiftieth time and laugh our
asses off.

I miss the electricity too.
Let's not lie about that.
The body doesn't retire
just because the calendar
keeps moving.
There is still hunger.
Still attraction.
Still that little voice
that remembers
what it was like
to be twenty-five.
But I don't want
the old nights anymore.
The bottles under the stars.
The drunken wandering.
The mornings
that couldn't remember
the night before.
I want something different.
A woman who cares about me.
Someone I care about.

Bent over the kitchen sink,
moaning hello to the orange and
lavender horizon.
A little dessert
before dinner.
A bowl of fruit and a
blindfold in the bedroom.
Miles Davis blowing his
horn to our love.
Then two cups of coffee
and a good Steinbeck novel
open between us.

Sex and friendship.
Desire and laughter.
The body reaching
for the person
the heart already knows.
Maybe that's what age teaches us.
Not that desire disappears.
That it becomes more beautiful
when there is somebody
worth desiring.
Somebody to wake beside.
Somebody who knows
your worst stories
and stays anyway.
Somebody who can tell you
you're full of shit
and make you laugh
when she says it.

I don't miss
being young.
Maybe I miss
having somebody
to be alive with.