one long difficult
brow hair  
sticking out
with a slight whirl toward the end
bending its once linear course

i pull at it
whiff on the first three tries
but get it on the fourth

one smear of red
marks the deed

holding it between thumb and forefinger
i observe its root
pale translucent box-like tag

bags layers of me

the shaft of hair itself
wears three layers

its cuticle tells species
the cortex tells the sort of hair
and the medulla tells ethnicity

but the follicular tag
brags of my very own me
that i cannot see
ladder of unusual protein
pirouettes
and scene