31-Year-Old-Lover by Kim Addonizio

31-Year-Old-Lover

 

When he takes off his clothes

I think of a stick of butter being unwrapped,

the milky, lubricious smoothness of it

when it’s taken from the fridge still hard

the way his body is hard, the high

tight pectorals, the new dimes of the nipples pressed

into the chest, the fanning of the muscles underneath.

I look at his arms, shaped as though a knife

has slid along the curves to carve them out,

deltoids, biceps, triceps, I almost can’t believe

that he is human—latissimus dorsi, hip flexors

gluteals, gastrocnemius—he is so perfectly made.

He stands naked in my bedroom and nothing

has harmed him yet, though he is going

to be harmed. He is going to have a gut one day,

and wiry gray hair where the soft dark filaments

flow out of him, the cream of his skin is going

to loosen and separate slowly, over a low steady flame

and he has no idea, as I had no idea,

and I am not going to speak of this to him ever,

I am going to let him stretch out on my bed

so I can take the heavy richness of him in

and in, I am going to have it back the way I can.