One.

When I took the beaded bracelet off my wrist today, I saw the shape of each little bead printed onto my skin — it was quite charming, so, narcissistically, I took a photo of it.

How could such a small string of beads carry such force, leaving a trace pressed into my body like that? When I take it off, will my arm feel sad? I wanted very much to keep that mark, but common sense about life tells me that’s futile. Surely I’m not the only one who has had such thoughts. Han Wo’s poem “Written When My Messenger Returned, Bringing a Silk Handkerchief as a Gift, Hence This Poem” contains a similar moment — though he was reluctant to part with the print of a red lip, while I can’t stop thinking about the trace of beads.

A few minutes later, the “印 etched into the flesh” recorded on my skin dissolved away, and my arm returned quietly to calm.

Two.

Life is only chance

Happiness and pain are the same

Let fate’s lines go to hell

In an instant —

The needle pierces the skin

Three.

I took a photograph of my own male member, and found, looking it over, something like a sense of “admiring one’s own reflection.”

The erect cock, the tousled pubic hair, the slightly swollen scrotum. Everything turns understated between black and white, taking on its own particular scenery. Like a mountain, like a shore, like an island, with an ancient pagoda standing among them and the night unhurriedly rising up behind.

A “filthy” thing, given a few extra strokes, becomes a small piece of work.

Four.

I remember once hearing it said that men generally like the hollow between a woman’s collarbones — that kissing there means a deep kind of love. But I can’t manage anything so lovely. What I love is here (picture).

Its location is really a poor one — almost no one pays it any particular attention; the alluring calf and the well-built thigh eclipse its light. If the leg bends even slightly, your hand sliding down the thigh will most likely skip right past it entirely. Standing straight, it becomes a small, taut bulge of muscle; the leg folded, it retreats lonesomely back into its hollow, pulled taut by the hard tendons on either side, like Christ on the cross.

Suddenly, I notice wrinkles have appeared there — two faint lines, faintly etched between thigh and calf. I salute you, the unnamed part of my body — subjective, never to be named, forever.