an excerpt from this week's memo:

I own a single bottle of nail polish. I bought it after years of never painting my toenails, never considering my feet something worthy of adornment. It was just such a beautiful color. Brilliant Bordeaux, it’s called, a deep bodily red. The color of heartstrings. I identified strongly with that color. I began painting my toenails all the time, using just that one bottle. I fell in love with my feet, often looking down at them as I walked or propping them up on coffee tables to wiggle my painted toes in the lamplight and watch the dance of tendons beneath skin.

            My bottle of nail polish enjoys a high place of honor amongst my possessions. Like my poster of elephants silhouetted against a backdrop of mountains, my custom-painted lamp dripping with beadwork, my Birkenstocks, my hiking boots; my nail polish evokes my identity.  I keep it on the bookshelf, right next to my favorite novels. I like to see my intelligence and my physicality side by side. I can be intellectual and sexual; I am a mind and I am a body.