Want: A Confession

And desire is quiet for a season, being run down before them; but when the hurry is over and the inquest past, the thief appears again alive, and is as busy as ever at his work.
-John Owen, 17th century spiritual writer


What can be said of want
but that it claws conversations
through—holding tight
with fiend fingers to its cloak.

It burrows in thin smiles
and slides down the slick
of a glutton’s tongue.

Want zips past mazes to my gut;
claiming sovereign, as if
it were necessity itself,
the most demanding muse.
And once its fingers
reach through me and grasp
the flesh, or slim
crisp dollars,
it quickly winds back
through veins
until it reaches the heart
curling up—
it is a seed in reverse—
masquerading
ignorance of itself
in me, as I choose
to not know of it.