caught in the pierglass

thin legs lope up the old red brick steps. just poles of bone encased in thin tissue and finally wrapped in dry skin, often scabbed at the knee and scratched white, like when you drag a a stick across your forearm. Almost numb, without the spring of powerful muscles. youth and bright blood coarsing palpable flesh.

I held the the dry strand of hair between my fingers. It existed alone in that space. The brittle hair had snapped as I tugged at my fringe and now hung between my fingers with a quivering and tensile strength, like a pole vault pole; firm and straight but with the potential to bend and flex - flick away. The light glinted across it and I watched my thoughts moving slow and steady, in a shimmering spiral, around the thin strand, removed from reality and sparkling my imagination into life. I pulled it through my teeth into finer pieces and sat listening with the hair stuck between my teeth and under my tongue and on the roof of my mouth and one little piece tickling the inside of my right cheek.