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.
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.
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.