Older woman, still vaguely attractive

How much lust has gushed between your thighs
and how does that vast, pulsating glob of man-seed
now square with the person you pretend to be?

Lace curtains, flower frocks, aromatic candles
—mere affectations of forced femininity—
now haunt the ghost of the throbbing beast

that once shafted its collective essence
deep into your yeast

You learned then on sweat-bedizened sheets
that pleasure was not a zero-sum game:
the more you gave the more you came

Was it middle-age dread, then
or cussed self-loathing
that turned that revelation on its end

making you grim custodian of slowly depreciating assets
the sad hoarder of flesh for a maggots’ feast?