It’s the self-sufficiency that intrigues
me. All those small, little acts that add up

to more. A friend writes about her blitzkrieg
sex life: hers is a world where she worships

only her own rapture. A cry, a puff,
a groan, a lament, an echo, an ache.

And the orgasm? Raucous enough,
oddly musical, what I might mistake

as a miracle. That long buzz and burn.
I have never been like that. It’s a shock

to learn that my own flesh and libido
could be somehow different, that I could learn

how these small acts work, that I could unlock
such fire, that I could be an inferno.