NAILS
(I actually wrote this for an assignment for a philosophy course - your autobiography from the POV of a body part) I grow about a tenth of a millimeter per day. And I have regrown countless times, so a different version of me has seen her everyday, I suppose. She leaves me be, when she's away from home but cuts me down as soon as her mother comes anywhere near a hundred meter radius. It was fine when she was 5, but now that she's in her early 20s, it's a little silly how decisions about her own body are still dependent on other bodies and minds. The way she's groomed me from when she was a child shows how she grew up and what she grew up to be. The little girl who used to sit with trembling fingers expecting pain as her mother cut her fingernails was a picture of a mess. We were always caked with dirt and if let loose, was coated in spices which amma had to quickly wash off before they inevitably landed in her ear. Always (trying to be) an overachiever, she figured out ...