Men can be beautiful if they are in photographs. There, their danger is behind their eyes, in the clenching of their teeth against the inside of their cheeks, the blood that stains the margins of their teeth, the thoughts attached to how badly they want to growl. If they blink so long that it’s just that their eyes are closed, it means their thoughts have turned serious and cannot be trusted to be peaceful.

They bite their bracelets when they want to taste gold. Sometimes they swallow them whole to convince themselves there is value in their insides. They flex the muscles in their stomachs instead of digestion. The hook of the bracelet can get stuck in their intestines. The way it catches blocks what their bodies want to do. So they rage in the ways that they’ve never needed to practice. They are experts, best kept in picture frames. If they are out and about there is no telling the damage they might do to their surroundings. The weaker they are, the stronger their radius of catastrophe can reach.

They put their jackets on the coatrack when they enter their rooms. They rip off their tank tops and call the fabric useless. They plug their finger into their bellybutton and wish they could understand better their bodies and its secrets. The way they laugh and cry is too similar. They can’t sleep at night until they count to one hundred in pushups.

They are in the mirror doing work with a comb and caring too deeply for the sharpness of their jaw. They thumb tack to the wall a diagram on how to tie a tie. They like to think they don’t deserve to choke when they tie the tie tightly and it looks too good to undo it and do it again.

The lighting is too hot on their forehead for their portrait.  They are instructed to look above the photographer and not into the camera. They look too sad when they look to see how they should have shined their shoes. They unravel the knot by their neck and wrap their fists with the tie so that if things come to what they often come to, they will protect their knuckles with a light layer of softness.