Eyelashes

When I was a kid I used to pull all my eyelashes out

Grasp one between my fingers and pluck it

Sometimes there’d be a bulb of blackness at the end

(Those were the best ones)

Sometimes it would be white at the tip

Oftentimes neither of those

Just a thin line of hair like a [[pencil mark]]

But the feeling was the real reward

I wouldn’t describe it as pain

Or if it was pain,

It was like pressing a fingernail into a callus

Faint and satisfying

It was all about the moment of plucking

The release from the [[flesh]]

I was self-conscious about how I looked

Strange and bare-lidded

An offness you couldn’t pin down

Until you looked at me up close