'Full Body Eraser' by Kristen Loesch

I don’t like shaving because it leaves scalded streaks up and down my legs, because it stings under my arms when I raise them (he says I ask too many questions). I don’t like to pluck either, like I’m a bird, like I’m pulling out feathers (he thinks people don’t need wings). He hates my body hair (he doesn’t like things that grow) though he doesn’t much fancy my head-hair either (he prefers things flat, unmoving). I say I’ll try a full body laser where they burn all the hair off, smooth the skin into slate, where I have to go and lie down (flat, unmoving) and they make me wear eye goggles (blinders) and the laser makes a shooting, scraping, swallowing, soaring (skinning, scalping, stabbing, suffering) kind of noise, going round and round over the same places, burning (burying) until it’s over and you sit up and take the goggles off and blink because all you see is perfect light all around without any darkness, any human imperfection, like you’re a barbie, like you’re a ballerina, like you’ve barely been born, and it should be fine to live like this, people still talk to you, see you, understand you, but it’s a little like he’s turned you into somebody else, a second person.