Nail Salon

We show up each Saturday

for our own reasons:

cheap luxuries, a hot date,

the small geography of our hands –

the length and shape of our nails,

cuticles growing like disorderly

weeds upon their flush beds –

the rhythmic hello-hello-hello

when you first enter the shop

from the chorus of Anie, Jannie and

Joo, the manager who sits in front,

an all-knowing wise woman, cooing

eight-dollar-manicure-twenty-dollar-manicure-pedicure-

for the newcomers and browsers,

but we are the regulars

who know what it costs,

always in place at 11:00am,

always complaining about our late start –

we know each other by polish colors:

the orange-hair woman with a crew-cut

dressed in sweatpants and feather boa,

only wears evergreen

because she says it goes with everything,

the young woman from Holland

with an earring piercing her infected brow

prefers baby-breath-blue with white tips.

I always select sand-of-the-beach –

but only after considering 

tokyo-red, forever-pink or sweetly-peach –

Joo always says next time darker color,

and then adds but sand-of-the beach

very relaxing, very peaceful –

yes, we are here for our own reasons –

for me it is the polish and buff,

the shoulder rub an extra hug

that comes with a five-dollar tip,

and more:

the opportunity to forget –

the man who bumped me on the street,

the boyfriend who forgot to call –

to discharge the little hurts of the week.