the comb
About a third of my body sticks outside of the warm sand in which I am buried. There is a cool breeze blowing through the cracks between my teeth today, while the rest of my body enjoys the thick, rough grains of sand. The feeling is not particularly unwanted – it does remind me of when I was carried in the jacket pocket of a neat gentleman whose hair was on the decline. About a third of my body was sticking out of there at all times either, and at least I was treasured. Maybe not exactly useful, since there wasn’t much hair left to comb, but he would still take me anywhere with him.
That is until one day we walked through the park here in the city. I remember him seeing his reflection on some kind of tin or glass surface and then it began once again – he pulled me out of his jacket and started to smoothen the two strands of hair he had, from right to the left. I was used to it since it happened every time we went out in the city whenever he saw his reflection somewhere.
Little did I know that it would be the last reflection of him I would ever see. At that moment, my body passed right through the outside of the pocket and just dropped lightly in silence onto the hot sand. He didn’t notice, nor did he come back to search for me. In fact, I never touched another hair ever again, as my body went a little bit deeper into the sand with every sunrise. One thing is certain – it was only silent after sunset as children don’t play in the dark. And when it’s light, the whole outdoors is filled with kids’ jingly laughs, screams or cries, and the vibrant colorful palette blinking from the swings, slides and carousels.
Once, the breeze hitting the edge of my body was hot, and the sand inside was even hotter. The inner sides of my teeth were burning and I desperately wished to be able to run them through something thinner and more delicate.
And then suddenly, I felt the sweaty grab of a small child’s hand that picked me up in an instant and swung me up in the air, as high as I have ever been.
“Look, look what I found!” echoed the kid’s loud and high pitched voice.
“Come on, it’s just a stupid comb.”, responded another voice coming from the nearby distance, sounding rather careless of the new discovery.
My pointy teeth dug in the skin of the boy’s tight grip. He started studying me with his playful eyes before he turned to his friend again and said, “It’s not just a comb! See, now it’s a guitar!” And right then, the boy started furiously jumping and shaking his head, while running his fingers through the whole length of my body. The rapid motion made me close my eyes and suddenly, the air was filled with the most majestic sounds I have ever heard! The screaming of children mixed with the further echoing of car engines was replaced by the calming, buzzing musical piece produced by the joint efforts of me and this boy in the park. After a second, the gestures of his body became even more fierce and I decided to open my eyes and fully take in the experience with all my senses.
And that’s when I saw them. What looked like thousands…no, MILLIONS of eyes were pointed towards our performance, looking up to us as though we were on a high stage. Everyone’s hands went high up in the sky synced with the rhythm of the song, while the bright concert light beams were making their way through the tall crowds of people. We really were in the spotlight today, and the whole world had turned their heads towards us!
After what felt like a minute of performing, out of the blue, the breathtaking sound was pierced by the sharp voice of someone down there in the crowd. The energetic motion of my stage partner slowed down and so did the fingers running down my teeth.
“Come on, we’ll be late for dinner, it’s already dark”, I saw the other boy say loudly from amongst the crowd. My stage partner stopped moving completely and that’s when the picturesque view of a concert crowd before my eyes fully transformed! The tall individuals of people shifted into long, gray structures, almost touching the sky with their sharp edges. Some of them were buildings that had hundreds of light dots, releasing beams of light into the dusk early evening. Others were thin poles with signs on top of them, some of which shedded blinking in different colours of lanterns.
The huge crowds of audience were gone in an instant the moment our song reached its end. I was patiently waiting for my partner to begin playing a new tune, hoping that the spectators would appear again in the face of the lifeless urban infrastructure.
However, without having to look at me twice, my partner in music tossed me lightly in the air and I carefully landed back in the sandbox, not too far from where I had been picked up only one performance ago. I closed my eyes as the light breeze was carrying grains of sand through the cracks of my teeth.
I fell into deep sleep while envisioning the stunning glow of the stage and the restless rhythm of the audience that I will never experience again.
the peripheral view 