Saturday, June 23, 2007

in situ

My guess is that the curve of my underarm
Is just a little too deep.
So no matter how many times I run the razor over the skin
There are always one or two hairs left.
And so here I stand
At 5:30 PM
In front of the bathroom mirror
Getting ready for another night shift
Trying to tweeze this one lone strand
With shaky hands.
The first attempt misses.
Pinching the delicate skin.
Fuck, I say aloud.
The second gets a good grip at the base.
I pull, but the hair remains
In situ
Now curled tight
Like the tweezers were scissors on a ribbon.
Third attempt, success.
Lucky number three.

3 comments:

(S)wine said...

i have to say
i've never before heard of,
or read
about an underarm hair
being in situ.
(although if you think of it as
an artifact, it might work giving it that label)

you know, in situ or not,
it may still not reveal
its provenance.
archaeologists
and paleontologists
might be baffled.

Rachel said...

Interesting, though I wasn't coming from an archeological slant. It's also a common term in the medical field meaning, 'in place'. We often say, for example, 'chest tube in situ'.

(S)wine said...

ah that's right. didn't think of it in a medical field kind of way.

In situ cytokine production by breast cancer tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes. i know all about that. i had conveniently forgotten it, though.