I hope you trust my freshest raw respect

[joel]

I hope you trust my freshest raw respect
in blood-and-guts ill health for you. I hope
you trust the agitated honors I
convey on you like hungered elements
within a festered, open wound that burn
consumption fury, joyfully alive—
I hope you trust my fleshy compliments:
embodiments of love with love intents,
with body goals, with carcass values I’ve
come longingly upon. So trust I yearn
corporeal for you; and if in tenements
of sickness’ waste I love you, if in high
and fevered temperatures I grasp and grope
to hold—what love in health won’t you expect?