I like the idea of nourishing my scalp in the shower. My roots are full of slippery egg whites getting through my fingers, just like sheer pantyhose moving all the fat above my joints. And when I imagine that I portray all the retired women from Italy waiting for us to clean their pantyhose and fix the holes with nail polish in exchange for a place for us to sleep and shower. Then I shave my egg white covered fingers from little hairs.

And when my razor gets dull, I send my boyfriend to a supermarket to save my ass for the following week. I’ve used a red nail polish once and the lady argued with me because I should have used a clear color to fix her garments. The red color coated my fingers and my little hair, almost mistaking it for blood, like someone has just bought beet juice instead of cherry coke, but the taste was still sweet.

And when I stand in the shower I search for my bikini-line and shave along it. A freshly-cut inner thigh feels like a chopstick field on his tongue. But in a few days the field shall grow and the chopsticks will spring free, resembling stretcher beds for the little skin bumps.

And I am honest to say that I didn’t fit in. But theItalian sun helped me contour my bikini line. Still, when I’m in the shower shaving down there I feel like a crab slav-squatting in Russia.

Published 21st January, 2023.


Iuliana Ursachi is a 21-year-old from Romania and she studies Romanian and English literature at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi. She has published prose on The Blood Pudding site so far and a few Romanian sites. She hopes to publish more in the future and maybe get a better grip on all the writing stuff.