Spoken by someone who has given up almost everything of themselves for another person, "Affection" reads less like a love poem than a plea from inside an unhealthy bond. The speaker begs to be reshaped into whatever the loved one wants, offers to be drowned, drunk, and killed off, and even says they would smile gratefully through it. The line "just you can manipulate me so well" shows they half-know what is happening and stay anyway.
Underneath the devotion is exhaustion. The speaker feels "dragged down by the times" and believes life is kind only to a chosen few, so being needed, even harmed, seems better than being nothing. The other person is placed almost like a god, while the speaker fears they might "ruin" that greatness just by breathing near it.
The mood is dark, heavy, and eerily calm. The ending, where one person can strangle the speaker "without a single frown," leaves a chilling sense of love that has turned into surrender.