Is it stiff? 

asked the fellow sitting

next to me at the movies,

pumped my teammate

on the wrestling squad,

catechized the seminarian

I lay with in the dunes,

grilled my boss at the diner,

queried the man I’d marry.

My comeback was invariably

yes if unspoken yet beheld.

Now it is my knee or my back

after tying my shoelaces

or cutting my toenails, chores

requiring herculean efforts;

it is the pain in the neck

I have become to myself

and him though he almost 

never says it. And that other

thing? so reliable in youth—

sometimes still sometimes.