It’s been five years since he’d beaten his greatest foe
His body is falling apart. He gazes upon his reflection in
the mirror, gripping his fat stomach with his hands and
wincing – Atrophy
Two insulin needles are loaded up – growth hormone in
one, morphine in the other
He shoots the GH into his abdomen
He sits on the toilet, wraps his belt around his arm, taps
his vein, and fills his arms with the junk
He exhales as the drug suffuses his central nervous
system, his head falls back. His mind goes quiet but he
can’t stop the tears
He cries. He wails. He’s fat and ugly. He punches the
mirror and gasps at his shattered, distorted reflection

When he wakes up, he does pull-ups. He can’t do more
than one
He considers his own inevitability
He knows he doesn’t have much left but never does he
face his own mortality
His mother was overbearing and over sharing
He called her on the phone hoping for support and
encouragement
She answered and cried about her own problems, she
didn’t ask how he was
After the call he put on a jock strap and left the house
for a walk

None of the street lights are on
Hours went by that he hadn’t heard a vehicle and he
started to wonder if civilization was merely a bad dream
that he’d had
He felt paranoid but what did that matter?
He briefly pondered the life of Jean Eustache, and the
life of Buster Keaton, and the life of Joanna of Castile,
and the life of Jake LaMotta, and the life of General
Douglas Haig, and many other lives full of potential and
full of squander
Unlike them, he would not be remembered or pondered
upon by anyone. He knew this at his core, and what he
thought was comfort with his meaninglessness had
collapsed and he despaired
His body was a broken down totem to his inability to
capitalize on the gifts that God had bestowed upon him
Finally, he heard the sounds of an engine, and walked
into the street. The light ahead of him was coming
closer, fast. It didn’t stop