Nailbiter
By: Melissa Ridley Elmes
As a nervy, anxious, maladroit child
I chewed my fingernails till they bled,
peeling them away layer by layer, then
gnawing the cuticles into submission—
as though all my anxiety resided there, as though
removing that skin would silence the disquiet within.
“Leave your poor nails alone,” my mother said,
“or you’ll never have pretty hands.”
But Alecia on the bus said I was ugly as roadkill,
and Angela on the bus said I had a dog’s face,
so I was pretty sure the appearance of my hands
didn’t matter all that much, in the long run.
And besides, I’d think in idle moments, diligently
working my teeth into my ragged nailbed edges,
undertaking in vain to smooth the jagged, bleeding flesh,
anyone who loves me for my hands and not my heart
is shallow; and also, the pain of cutting to the quick
keeps me here, grounded in the real, which mom said
I need to do, I should be focused in the now, I should
Stop dreaming and get my head out of the clouds.
So I chewed, and gnawed, and sucked at the blood
and imagined: what if I could keep pulling off layers
of nail and tugging at cuticles until all that torn matter
came peeling off in my teeth and I swallowed it down
inch by inch, the whole dermis, until like a caterpillar
emerging new-skinned from a chrysalis, like a
newborn baby shining with afterbirth and hope, like
Aslan pulling off Eustace’s old skin, I auto-cannibalized
that humiliated, mutilated, bygone me into someone new,
pretty-faced and perfect-nailed, someone who
could ride the bus home tranquil and unmolested?
Melissa Ridley Elmes is a Virginia native currently living in Missouri in an apartment that delightfully approximates a hobbit hole. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Black Fox, Poetry South, Haven, Star*Line, Eye to the Telescope, In Parentheses, and various other print and web venues. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Dwarf Star and Rhysling awards for speculative poetry, and her first collection of poems, Arthurian Things, was published by Dark Myth Publications in 2020 and nominated for the 2022 Elgin award.