one morning, Jack awoke with a distinct feeling
that something was not quite right.
as he peeled his eyes from a crusty sleep
his suspicions were further aroused by a marked loss
of sight from his right eye
as though he was peering through
a thick charcoal jungle
he clutched his hand towards his face
and was alarmed to find
a rather substantial lock of hairs
protruding from his right eyebrow.
wondering if perhaps he might
still be in a world of waking dreams
where one couldn’t really trust one’s intuitions,
he wandered over to the light switch,
flicked it on/off a couple of times.
having reached the conclusion that
he was definitely not dreaming,
and that his retinas
(or his left one, at least)
were definitely receptive to fluctuating light levels
he made his way to the bathroom
to inspect his face, with one hand
bemusedly fondling his recently grown eye-brow fringe.
in the bathroom he stumbled
across his wife sitting on the toilet.
on catching sight of her hairy husband,
she let out a deranged scream.
"darling, you'll alarm the neighbours" said Jack.
but his wife, who did not seem
to be sufficiently worried about
alarming the neighbours,
or anyone in her resident universe
continued to make strange warbling noises.
so, Jack instead decided to study
his growth in the kitchen sink.
although not made from
exemplary reflective material,
the sink was able to confirm
his impression that his right eyebrow had,
overnight, been subject to an alarming rate of growth.
his wife appeared in the doorway.
“I’m sorry for screaming.
it was only because I thought you were a pirate”
she said. and though he knew
that this was just one in many
of a long string of inter-marital lies
that bounced between them,
he let it pass. a decision having
been decided upon in perhaps
not the most democratic manner possible,
Jack's wife fetched the kitchen scissors
from the drawer by the dishwasher.
as she snipped away, chunks of black
fell soft like feathers from sunburnt wings
and landed on the Lino.
Jack felt inexplicably sad.
they went off to work as usual,
and no one noticed
the jagged edge of his once pirated-eyebrow.