Screw you, Plato. You call my art an imitation? Tell me, would Socrates call your body an imitation? Would he call the little performances you put on while touching his bare skin an imitation? Is that why you felt so bold naming me what you did? and if my art is imitation, then why does everyone want it? Why does no one beg for my mind, my numbers, my soul? Why does no one ask for the machinery behind my ribs, the architecture of my thoughts, the mathematics of my longing? You want the body, not the truth. You want the heat, not the history. You want the moan, not the meaning. And the moment I dare to moan no, the moment I dare to step out of the script, I become nothing. Not even a tragedy worth watching. Not even a dance worth learning. Not even a story worth stealing. Stripped of every illusion of desire. I become the thing you step over on your way out. The thing you forget existed. The thing that held the weight of your performance but never earned a bow.