mystery is the most attractive quality

by Reem Abu-Baker

In preparation for the dates I go on, I spend a lot of time tweezing small hairs from my body.

The hairs are stiff and black, and they remind me of the legs or antenna of bugs. This observation is what sparked my research project. I am studying the connection between the strange hairs that grow on my body and all the bugs of the earth. There is one other researcher who also studies this topic. I fly to Holland to see her, but she is not very friendly and so

I stab her arm with a ballpoint pen and run off with the hard drive that holds all of her secret discoveries. As you can see,
I am the villain.

In Holland, I eat package after package of waffle cookies stuffed with caramel. I am sugar high and also actually high.
I go on lots of dates and continue plucking lots of hairs and placing them in killing jars so I can pin them and catalog them later when I feel like it.I consider opening the hard drive but then I remember that       mystery is the most attractive quality,       and so I throw the hard drive out the window and laugh maniacally while it shatters all over the cute little bricks.

Slowly, I drag my fingers across all my skin, feeling for the pricking places where new hairs might poke up. Every so often I encounter one that is long and stiff and wriggling out, trying to taste the sugar in the air. These, I pinch between thumb and pointer. I close my eyes, finger the bends, chant the pieces as I find them:
coxa,
trochanter,
femur,
tibia,
tarsus.

After I name them, I throw them away.