added his heat to the nimbus
of our intent, here where
we make ourselves:
something difficult
lifted, pressed or curled,
Power over beauty,
power over power!
Though there's something more
tender, beneath our vanity,
our will to become objects
of desire: we sweat the mark
of our presence onto the cloth.
Here is some halo
the living made together.
The sweat mark forms an organic and malleable symbol. At the beginning the stain was characterized as being gross and a symbol of selfishness. However, in the last two lines of the poem, the once “salt-stain spot” (1) is now something much more important than that. 
 Doty suggests that even though working out for the sole purpose of physical beauty is not a good mind set to have, the fact that someone has the ability to do that in the first place is still something to take pride in. The stain is a product only of healthy and living people; it is significant because it shows the importance of life.
At the Gym