Fingernails

I.
I cut my fingernails today, those long talons
everyone thought were fake.
They’d started to tear, to catch on things
and rip away, leaving a jagged edge
that drew blood.

I’d pressed those fingernails
to the skin of four different people in this past week,
laughing, joking, pretending to be some monster from the deep—
but really to see if I had that ability
to speed hearts with my attention, my clawed touch.
I’d figured out long ago that half of attraction is circumstance,
but I still took advantage of it, still enjoyed
the power so easily handed to me.
Evil girl. Yet I can’t manage to hate myself.

Lately, I’ve been screwing with a lot of peoples’ lives.
I’m sorry sounds so childish from this young throat,
these lips that have only ever kissed one person.
I didn’t mean to, the girl whines, six years old again.
Oh, but I did mean to. Did I intend all this to happen?
I fucked you up. I fucked myself up.
Yet it’s proof of my new power, and I laugh.

II.
I cut my fingernails today:
watched the slivers fall into the trash and thought about
the last time blades had shorn a part of me away.
I donated my hair the day before that weekend.
How could I have known about the girl that I became,
the mixture of the writer and the past identities
flailing in a cocktail mix of confused emotions
too alien to deal with, too familiar to avoid.
That girl with the long hair knew nothing of what was to come.
She was two people, two lives—Bridget and Usagi.
She hadn’t yet experienced the merging of double minds.
She couldn’t know how hard it is to separate again.

Innocent girl, so unsure of her identity.
She marveled at her new face in the mirror
of the shampoo-scented room.
By contrast:
I think I know who I am now, but
she’s too much for one person, one brain;
separate levels of consciousness trying to occupy the same space
fight amongst themselves with cruel reverses,
tactical maneuvers that leave me reeling
barefoot in the forest, trying to figure out
which one of me was that girl.

It’s not that I don’t know what I want—
simply that parts of me have different goals
and so I reach for everything,
grabbing for the world with the too-short arms
of one person.
Bridget and Usagi lash out at each other
as they smile, best friends with their hands around the other’s throat.
Suppressed slacker Bee observes, bemused and bored
as everyone else watches, wonders,
thinks, applauds, and laughs.

III.
I cut my fingernails today, those unpainted barriers
of perceived separation.
They made me different enough
to be remembered—[am I?]—
but not too strange, not vulnerable—[yet I am].
A passive-aggressive “Fuck you” to the world.
My appearance: my desire
for people to if not look twice
at least look once.
I craved the ability to stand out
but I also wanted comfort. The safety of the shadows.
Acceptance looked so welcoming to naïveté
and remained so even when I saw
her true face: invisibility.

It seems silly now to have lived so much of my life
dictated by appearances:
long fingernails as an act of tiny rebellion
so small no one notices but me.
Ah, the contradictions of the teenage girl
wanting to be anything but typical.
Why should fingernails matter?
I look at myself
and laugh.

IV.
I cut my fingernails today
and didn’t think of anything at all.
I smoothed the sharp new edges down,
climbed into a fold-out hotel bed
and reflected briefly on the ink stains on my fingers
and why I kept wanting to laugh.