The Gaps Within by Gill Hoffs

I don’t understand now’s dislike of the mini deaths. The daily deaths that happen all around you. Skin shedding cells, fallen hairs clinging like cobwebs to a fuzzy coat, the crescent moon of a clipped nail, the tooth twisted at school till it falls on the floor as tiny ivory. Evidence not just for CSI that their bodies are getting older, broker, closer to the grave.

I’m fascinated, myself. Ebay is my second home, where I go for the memorial jewellery, hair locks twisted into necklaces, coiled behind cameos, lustreless in death. Why is that so different from strays culled from a brush? Woven into a grey fluffed tapestry, follicles tiny pearls, creamy as the softest of soap-scum.

No-one understands me. When a plaster floats by in the swimming pool, with a dot of old red like the flag of Japan, they swim away, lips curling as if expected to swear allegiance to the foreign nation.

So what do I do? How do I fund my collections, the packets arriving daily, the drawers filled, the cushions stuffed as hair pillows (hardly a penance in my mini death-bed).

Not a doctor, not a morgue attendant, not a hospital porter.

No, I take a different kind of tip with me when I leave,

I’m a hairdresser, a beauty therapist.

And I sweep, and sweep, and sweep.

© 2011 Gill Hoffs

Gill Hoffs began writing competitively just over a year ago. Her work has since won several competitions and is included in five print anthologies including the upcoming Stripped, several magazines including upcoming issues of Lost In Thought, Schrodinger’s Mouse, and The Linnet’s Wings, and widely online at such places as 52/250, Spilling Ink Review, Carnage Conservatory, Pure Slush, and Blue Five Notebook.

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