i stare at my half-clothed body in the mirror,
comparing to your red-filtered half-skinned silhouette
in the photograph you sent me ever so faultlessly:
brutalist and surreal, in sharp monochrome definition,
with an expression as cold and unfeeling as concrete...

all bright eyes, wry grins,
and a corrugated abdomen:
yet your arms conceal
your chest and navel,
betraying a baser shame

you need not hide from me,
my laurel-crowned achilles:
in these eyes, you will
forever be god incarnate

emulation comes natural
(i could only ever behold
beauty by plagiarizing it):
so i shave.

not just my face...no, i take the razor
and drag it into the heath of my underarms,
across my chest, the insides of my thighs,
tracing my collarbone and (waist | waste)

i shave till my skin is raw, blotchy red;
till hair no longer bristles against
the strokes of my jaundiced fingers

i want to tear off patroclus
like the ill-fitting bandage he is:
his shame is my own, seborrheic and crawling
(learn to treat the source, not the symptoms;
cull those parasites from their deep-set roots)

god, would you grant me your favor...
if i was youthful as ganymede?
call upon me in your times of need...
if i was faithful as hephaestion?
give me all i have ever longed for...
if i was as narcissus, that conceited beauty,
who was no more egotistical than he was honest?

i clutch the rolls of subcutaneous fat in the shower,
cranking the faucet in hopes of
rendering it out with the heat
like some ****** up confit;
such is the price of my babylon

bloated, the cystic acne on my back
bleeding into my bedsheets,
i realize it is moments like these,
when my woolen throat abrades at my voice
and i want to retch with each inhale;
when torpid tide pools of saliva
lap against my cheeks
and nausea consumes me:

i am at the mercy of my body and its afflictions—
i can only take these sensations, seen and unseen,
silently as they come, moment by moment,
patiently enduring this migraine of the heart.

the only thing that gives me joy
is seeing the water roll down
my body in beautiful thin sheets,
unobstructed by thick forests of hair

a diagnosis would only warrant my weakness,
justify the existence of the black villous mass
beyond mortal comprehension within me—
within us, wretched god—

i resignedly accept that your messages
will find their way to me only in the dark hours;
i know this even as i text you on the bus ride home,
because you never had time for me but i find myself
constantly making time for you,
begging for someone to care the way i do...

oh but there are still debts to be exacted,
reparations to be paid, my bright-eyed misgiver
(and you won't want to be around
when i collect on them)

when you gaze upon my withered husk
on the hospital bed,
permit me my resplendent self-destruction
silence those morphine alarms
trace the morse code scars on my arms
read and heed their silent plea:
do not resuscitate.