He comes to me, crawling.

To stroke the mask he won’t finish,

to mend me, wet and bend my nose

till I can almost smell the dust on my shoulders,

the grease of my foreign hair,

and the oil in my eyes he forces into a beckoning;

so I become an eternal invitation.

In the absence of negotiation,

I become lust and disgust, authentic artifice,

wholly soulless and endearingly docile.

I am the chill that comforts him,

the thrill he seeks to tame

the shame of dreams

we scream to shush…

but assert themselves, like a revenant’s shadow

we know is only a trace

yet we chase it, while he

chafes me in vain

I remain unnamed:

the projection of a project,

I approximate,

the symptom of an obsession:

specific and generic,

singular but solitary…

Assembled through perpetual mutilation

to resemble satisfaction,

horror, youth, both, no no no, none.

–

He works at me, jerks my limbs to his liking till

I hear the grinding from the

winding of that thing he stares at.

To present me, listless and trapped by lust.

How I resent it.

Irresistible,

unable to resist.

–

If I move, it is by your design.

Recline, retract, recline. Refine, refine, refine.

And if I speak, I can only tell your story:

a tall tale of degeneration, creation and appropriation.

A cycle of violence

that breaks but made me…

Why must I hurt to be?

© 2025 Emil Krastev