Once upon a time my nails were clean
no dirt to remove from the porcelain edges beneath my nail beds
then I dug down into the earth
and pulled up worms and clumps of dirt, and everything
sat between my pristine nail beds,
my peachy fingers, with a depth that takes in
dirt, mud, black sludge, cheeto dust (cuz I ate them).
So I cut my nails off.
Cut off any in-between or any sense of stain
It’s always a stain isn’t it?
If the color isn’t white.
The stain of red on a dress.
Mud on your shoes.
Brown on your pants.
Green on your knees.
Who decided white was the virtuous color,
because it is always the color stained?
There’s bleach.
So bleach the red on the dress.
Ignore the colonization of First Nations.
Bleach the mud on your shoes.
Ignore Black Lives Matter.
Bleach your brown pants in the laundry.
Ignore children left at the border of America in cages.
Bleach the green on your knees.
Ignore our world dying at the hands of industrialism raping natural resources.
Once upon a time my nails were clean
Now, I need to bite them down to the bone
And I keep biting until blood ends and life returns
There is no resurrection in blood
only in death do I return to life.
It is the lesson of my life to leave my nails behind.
My ego will always grow again
It will always return.
And I can always bite it back.
So I’ll keep biting my nails to the nub and hope to find love.
I believe I will always find love in the grooves that live in my fingers.
After my nails have been removed,
the extension of my heart lives through how I offer my hand.