tuckova

Nails that were bitten back for years, the stunted beds telling the history of decades of gnawing, like a rat or more correctly a mouse, the wearing down the result of compulsive nibbles, over and over, through the keratin, also through the rough bits of skin, torn cuticles, fingers shamecurled into palms when it comes time to meet ladies. Finally after years. each nail capped with a half moon of self-control and now we find we are picking at other things. We want to be smooth, to be without blemish, polished marble. Museum quality. There are scabs and they are awful, brown crusts of things that happened some time ago, and we tear them off with our newly sharp nails and they bleed and crust and we tear them. Picking scabs, feral, crouched in a corner with tangled hair and a mouth full of blood. The taste of old pennies. No, today we are more careful, today we are smiling across the table, that smile that is the tips of the teeth and cool blue assessing eyes and no, tell me about you, how are you? and when we come home we take ourselves off the leash and pick and tear and the dismay creaks in our throats because we do still bleed, even when we've lowered our body temperature to ice. It's exhausting. It would be good to stop. It would be so, so good to stop. But please you have to believe me that there is a day when I will scrape off the scab and all that will be left underneath is a shiny scar, flawless as glass, the color of skim milk. And then it will be over, and then I will have a story to tell, and then we will drink something delicious that almost burns and we will laugh so hard at the shit we did when we were younger and foolish, once it is a scar it is a story and once it is a story it is a shield, a clear, good laugh. I promise I'm getting there. I'm sorry it takes so long.