last birthday post ever

Don’t take your suit off for me. I’m not certain that I want to see the muscles, variously defined. The work you have invested in the creation of this new body that people comment on when ever you leave the room. I saw you first before the work was done. Round-shouldered, perhaps but beautiful. I called you beautiful on your special order forms. The others let me serve you. They were amused at my sudden heart-flutter, my clumsiness with pens and paper and my inability to work the computer whenever you were about.

We have become friends. You humour me when my self esteem is low. You tell me that you are watching, through the bright lens of my window. You lie for me because you are almost perfect. I tell you that I have trouble listening whenever you are near. You are like a light turned up too bright. I hover moth-like in the space around you. You read one step ahead of everyone around you. Your sharp intelligence is something that I long to cut myself on. I follow the trail of you, book by book. I open Proust and I smell the sharp clean cologne that would pleasantly suffocate me. Yes I use the image of you, sometimes, when I am alone. The quick fix of your studied dress, your turn of phrase, your laughter. All of this never fails to satisfy a moment of my need. I keep your clothes on in my dream of you, I keep you as I see you, wonderously kind and good and always laughing with me, my always beautiful companion, my firefly burning yourself out inside the pleasure centres of my brain.