Still Got the Fire
Years have come and piled like cordwood at the door.
The mirror shows a face I’m still learning to recognize.
Hair retreated. Waistline lost a war it couldn’t fund.
Something still combusts beneath the ribs — unrescinded.
Joints lodge their protest when I haul myself upright,
but there’s a current I can’t extinguish — electrical, theoretical,
past whatever they’ve named prime, the engine hasn’t quit,
something running hot and hungry, refusing to submit.
Kids think they cornered the market on desire,
hold the patent and deed to wanting.
I’ve got two decades of knowing how to feed the need.
Reflexes dimmed but every shortcut memorized.
Experience doesn’t deteriorate —
it just gets wrapped in something lived.
So this is for the nights that categorically refused to end,
for hunger that survived whatever the years decided to send,
for wanting more than I was supposed to still want.
I’m still burning. I want considerably more.