PROTEINS

1.
Precious documentation provides a handle
of the smooth kind over a third, pouched
surface on which there's now no question.
After the original growth, application's both
periodical and clear, a noninterference
policy that used to arise only when visible.
On the other hand on the head or arms
raised to skin-the-cat: like all ideas,
it caught but was never allowed to get long
enough to tangle. Razor companies (see
two and three) did the allowing, put it all
on order; as for odor, it's not on the list.

2.
Tweety Bird pinches both above and below.
This, like one and three, I used to perform but for
the shortest time. For everyone in the room time
never shortens, each brown a classroom
shaped like the ideal spine, fine and arched
between nothing instead of full stops. Each
classroom is before the mirror between the
initial and the final step. There's a name
for what I've got, for girls who have what
I've got. I've got caterpillars waiting for birds.

3.
Weakness in the kitchen shortens pants and
frocks out dresses, lightens fabrics, shares
vocabulary. The secret ankle burden of retying
ribbons every few seconds flaunts on the couch.
Here, hair makes me superfluous, provides
the evidence of things not seen. On each it would
present an array of darkness, not discussion; it
would herald (see one and two). The very
thinnest and youngest moments ask the first
question as soon as the fat melts, if it does.

4.
Both luscious and crowning, crowing
and growing. The shortest in the room: why
waste it, and its weight? Why like that? Start
to believe I disgrace it shortly after Carmen
returns from the salon, and what that used
to mean socially and how it hasn't
changed in the time she's been there. Blond,
red, black but twisted, black but straightened,
ironed but recoiled, see eight, expenditures,
all artful, all done. To a turn, a gelled bend.

5.
The other pair in the room (the house, the yard,
the project) is on an otherwise completely suited
ten-year-old-girl who exhorts my hula-hoop efforts
with little hope. All the things that she
has that I don't have are uppermost for
her, but we both have this. Two causes, a double
case, gather dust in a backpack as if to say,
I did all this once. To lie, It won't get
you anywhere. Already the terms are of
getting, and from there to buying or to
capturing only sixty slightly divergent steps.

6.
I know very well this was a concession, once
makeup had been despaired of. But compare
my little health-food pocket phial to the forestry
of liners, tube colors, tints and frosts, discounts and
flavors, though not always intentional flavors.
To be hit or to gnaw? This is the first tier of
alluring names. Topographical shade
and state changes the border of edge and
swell, fills tiny doubts and crevices with
extra roundness. Time for a further, more explicit
application, a pore-by-pore in passing.

7.
They won't be big enough, or one will be missing, or
they'll fail in some other way. The question is
asked by at least one in the cool length; in the
lobe area more than I supposed, I'm sensitive,
plead infection. Their holes are filled. Big, they
offer balance, anchor, ballast, weight (see
four), a natural fruit of beauty as in a
stylized painting of a beautiful tree. How
do we know it's beautiful? Because of the dangle,
extra; not progeny who hang from other extremities,
nipples first, then limbs, like huge bracelets.

8.
See four again: shampooed but conditioned. The first
thing to do after getting up or before going
downstairs, before levels, before anything: the
care and feeding of assets, the groundwork.
Then you can load up, they seem to say in full
sail. The lineup of compositions, devices,
additives, relaxers will come later but before their
heads swashbuckle around the kitchen. Remove,
replace. Fresh scalp dampness between
twisties, the palest, tenderest parts producing oils.

9.
Those first threads already: don't stop till you've
started! Panic! Not a single, not a married
one except the very oldest great-grandma shows
a spark, much less a bouquet or a strip.
Useless to protest they're full of light. Panic
floods, panic is toxic and kills the root faster
than color can. This is what we want to retain as
much as possible in contrast. This is where no
toll has to be taken. And waiting is the range,
shelves of false choices, included gloves and mixable
solutions, all to cover up that no one's promising
anything. Certainly nothing but a youthful bargain.

10.
Now we're getting somewhere. Now we've arrived. All
the things everyone should do collapse into the one
thing the target shouldn't be doing on her very
skin: the mark, the stamp, the holdout. It comes
last because if allowed to remain, it'll mar the
already created perfection of the other
tenets; its removal will ensure that I
forget everything I know, all those causes and
effects getting in my way. All wiped, and I'll
be ready to get married. Having forgotten. Needless
to say, none of them have inky hands.



Kate Schapira lives, writes and teaches in Providence, RI. Her work has appeared in a number of print and online publications. She's starting a project about bearded ladies, so if you are one or know one, email her at kjschapira@hotmail.com.


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