Irritan
by Lora Grillo
It's tough
doin, he thought.
This whole
business of days and nights and how they all sort
of blend together like the hairs that stick out
of his nostrils. He should buy a nose hair
clipper, one that doesn't hurt. He feared the
sting that would come from clipping his nose
hairs with his nose hair clipper; so instead, he
let them grow longer than he should.
The day before
the day before, they didn’t seem as long as
they do today.
Tomorrow, they
will probably be longer than today. The nose
hairs. The ones he needs to cut. The problem with
the hair is that it keeps growing in places that
you don't want it to, but not growing, growing,
not growing, in places you do want it, he thought.
He realized as
he thought this, he had thought it before.
Not sure if it
was yesterday or the day before yesterday.
He counted
thirteen nose hairs in his left nostril and
eleven in his right. Counting took longer than he
imagined it should take to count nose hairs or
any hairs, but his eyes were not so good these
days. Not that he would ever agree to wear
glasses. He didn't need em.
Nobody’s
eyes ever got any better after wearin glasses, he
always said to anyone who would listen.
He
“always” said a lot of things, he
thought. He liked saying certain things better
than other things. “Tough doin” was a
favorite, but he didn’t much care for
anything before or after that in any particular
sentence. Come to think of it, “par-tic-ular”
is a pretentious word that he wished he
hadn’t thought of in the first place.
No glasses.
Nothin doin.
He slowly made
his way toward the kitchen, where he would search
for the scissors his wife uses to cut chicken
strings.
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