Sweet

I couldn't decide if he was your skinhead boyfriend
or your balding father
As you walked towards the parked '82 Impala.
But you offered no such ambiguity.
You were steadfast in your lush sweetness,
Sticky, you were, but saved from cloying,
just by the skin of your teeth
and the sharpness of your tongue, as
you berated him for some fashion faux pas.

Various biopolymers within me stretched, flexed.
Anachronistic, I thought at them, but my genes longed
to recombine with yours.
Frantic, they triggered hormonal releases, 
endorphins, adrenalin, testosterone. 
I knew it would accomplish nothing. I knew.
And my modern human intellect was vindicated
as he drove away with you,
left me standing beside a borrowed ten-speed,
in the A & P parking lot,
On Pine street
In Sault Sainte Marie.