In 2018, I’ve been working on my feet

In 2018, I’ve been working on my feet, which are, frankly, disgusting. I saw at the calluses with a tool with sharp holes, like a grater. I coax ingrown nails to come out where I can see them. I fumigate for fungus. I paint to hide shame.

In 2018, I’ve been working on shoulder strength, push-ups and planking. The closer I get to the ground, the harder it is to support my own weight.

I work on friendship, work on writing, work on the c-major scale for guitar.

In 2018, the democracy’s battered. I’m getting fatter. Now my dog is on a diet. I study how the president triggers my past powerlessness in the face of my father. Patriarchy is real, so I’m working on my feet and my shoulders. I’m working on my face and my fingers. I’m working on belief.

In 2018, I’m sequestering grief in the opposing big toes where the nails have been buried by the pointy-toed pumps of the eighties. Short of tearing them out, I welcome the pain. I wonder if this counts as self-mutilation. I wonder if, as with laboratory rats, this grooming is a sign of distress.

It is 2018, and thousands of immigrant children are in cages at the border. It is 2018, and the president’s family has made billions of dollars while they charitably give up their salaries. Or they contemptuously laugh at their ridiculous salaries. I bet their feet look real good. I bet they offer them up to subservient faces beneath them.

At night, I cover my feet in cream, pull on socks and let them tenderize. Once I walked eight miles on a beach in the hopes that this would work like an emery board. It was also a way to escape some relatives’ “We got ours” politics. My feet were rougher, not smoother, at the end.