studs raze more than twenty years ago, a man with a smile i didn't see long enough to remember fired a thin rod of pain through the fleshy part of my left ear and slid a gold stud into the hole he made. i swabbed both sides of the piercing with alcohol to keep it clean and slept through mild discomfort for a night or two, knowing i'd given my body a small gift that wasn't meant for anyone's eyes but my own. after a while i switched to a silver ring. aside from having to take it out for a few x-rays and an mri, that ring stayed put until it almost bisected itself in the uncertain dark of morning a few weeks ago. somehow i've forgotten how to work anything ring-shaped into my ear. it doesn't matter how long i stand at the mirror staring at my own face. i can't make it happen. i found the gold stud i hadn't laid eyes on in more than half the time i've been alive, and i guided it back into a hole that isn't ready to close just yet. i couldn't fit the back stopper against the thin part of the stud to lock it in place, but i thought it was secure. the other night i was washing my face at the bathroom sink when the stud fell out of my ear. i watched the last piece of gold left from a part of my life i probably remember better than i should rattle down the drain, lost like the water bottle and toothpaste caps already claimed by that hungry hole. i tried another ring. no luck. but hidden in a small box, beneath the white fluff that once held the first gold stud in place, i found its forgotten twin, old enough to drink almost anywhere in the world and still as perfect as the day it was shaped. now it rests in the same place its other half did, until some accident of gravity or fate takes it away from me. 220112 what's it to you? who go blather from