Written by: Alejandro Bastidas

Photography by: Hailee Williams

Model Noah Swart

I long for interludes of stillness

   as I stumble down the distance 

   between myself and the stranger’s body

• 

I am destined to inhabit

against my will, against my nature

         held hostage until my skin is paper thin,

my name stolen from the barefoot boy

running in circles in my memory

another phantom

I am summarized in a title

  useful in business days only

carbon-copied creature chemically wired

to sacrifice the flexibility of the individual,

    the beauty of vulnerability

• 

  What if I despise the figures of manhood

monochromatic, beaten into our psyche

with a hammer a set of instructions:

This is how to self-destruct

This is how to disappear

I forfeit the language of fear

• 

    onwards across the tightrope 

still barefoot, ready to catch myself midair