FINGERNAILS

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Fingernails are modified hair; harder, which I can look at.
They keep growing – for a while –
after the heart pronounces death, with a stubborn
yet strong will to prolong.
A masseur is nicer than a hairdresser,
who often holds a weapon in my proximity,
dismantling my body
with sounds, but no pain.

On the massage bed, my body still stank with funeral smell.
The incense sticks and papers, all burned to
reach another dimension. No telephone to heaven, but
speed post to hell. Six foot two, standing above
ground, you became spaceless to me. The flesh decayed
in the earth; the coffin also shrank like a cotton T-shirt. Frogs
and worms be your nocturnal neighbours, chewing
the nails on your fingers hungrily. You let them do it;
no revolt. They chanted and danced in the dirt with
voices that couldn’t be heard in the dark vacuum.

The oil lubricated the thin melancholy on my back. His
fingers turned into magic wands, caressing my skin like
nameless little fish swimming through the painful
crevices between rocks. The hole where my head rested
fixated my posture, but limited my vision to purely
downwards. The world was divided into the upper and lower halves.
The masseur pressed against my tense
shoulders, advising me to sleep before 12 am,
not understanding the torment of post-funeral insomnia. His
thumbs pinched, the touch eased the
residual sadness hiding in the acupressure points.
I imagined: the masseur was born with no fingernails.
His ten naked fingers lived as long as the rest
of his body, without armor protection. He came
to this world lacking and would go in the same way.
My solitary stiffness was buying the comfort from
his whimsical nail-less fingers, a new platform with
no screen doors, where all the passengers awaited.

Nicholas Y.B. Wong

Filed under : EDITION  - The Fifty Shrinking Years 

ARCHIVES of November , 2006