hair

a tickle beneath my tongue,
not a taste but a texture.
A long tether between my teeth;
I reach for its origin,
but only trace saliva and torture,
for an itch I cannot reach.

I unhinge my jaw,
my mandibles parting
with the movement of Moses,
and the fleshy Red Sea of my swallows
is revealed to the foreign touch
of my blind fingertips,
feeling for the strange, invisible string
that strangles me.

But there is no bite
from the bait that taunts me.
Its elusive body is woven
within the womb of my gums,
burrowing into wisdom tooth sockets—
a secret known to nobody,
not even me.

My tonsils tease
by sending stimuli
for an itch I cannot scratch.
And for what I cannot grasp,
I have learned to release
all of the torturous strands
that form a noose around me.

In the pool of vomit,
brunette curls swim in spirals,
braiding themselves into bunches
like a bouquet of bile,
reminding me of my own twine,
dead once departing
from the scalp, though
never degraded over time.