When In Rome I was talking to a Swiss girl, she told of a former classmate who plucked out all of her eyelashes, inflicting a vulnerability on her soul. I bartered with the tale of a girl who shaved off all of her eyebrows. I’d received the news when drinking beer by the Colosseum, that place where gladiators had impaled by trident and sword point. She had scalped herself with a Bic. (She met me at the airport, masked by a silk bandanna. I knew what she concealed. She knew that I knew.) Sometimes she would descend the stairs wrapped in a yellow sari dress: “Look at me, I’m a Punjabi girl!” Dancing around the room like some insubstantial sylph ©AndrewJamesMurray
When In Rome
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