Why We Don’t

I cannot believe I came 23 times in one day. I will never have prostate cancer.
—Quote from "Why We Cheat," by Lisa Taddeo, Esquire (April 2012)

It's not like I live only for the transient ecstasy
of my limbic system overloading

like a transformer blown
when an unlucky squirrel crawls inside.

Nor is it simply evolutionary drift,
some primal need to reproduce, that washes

me up upon your wide, safe shore. It's not,
ultimately, sex at all that binds me to you

like a fly caught in fresh shellac,
though, of course, it is. It just is no longer

a blowjob, your breasts swinging, your ass
upended like an animal's. It is still all that

but it is also how you nest your head
on my shoulder before we rise from bed, how

we fold each other's clothes, how I know
you will care for me when I am old, or I you.

There is an age we pass, or most pass,
where biology finally wanes

as the main theology of your life.
It's not that you don't still believe

in the Miracle of Sin, just that you find
you'd rather linger on the couch in socks

because your feet are cold and later,
perhaps in the parental dark,

remind each other why
you both still live in the same house.