Toenails

By day soft socks pamper them and hobnailed boots lend them support, but my toes don't care about this. Their only concern is growing nails - semi-transparent, horny, resilient sheaths to protect them. From what? Wary brutes that they are, never for a second do they stop producing their puny armour. They reject the world and all its delights and go on endlessly manufacturing useless claws, which are snipped time and again by a pair of Solingen scissors. It took my toes some ninety twilit days of prenatal imprisonment to set this one industry in motion. When I'm laid to rest in the Recoleta, in an ash-grey house bedecked with dried flowers and talismans, my toenails will persist in their stubborn toil until corruption curbs them. Them, and the beard on my face.

[1934]