I like cotton swabs... Soft, familiar, comforting. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine I'm in a bathroom with heated tiles, a bubbling jacuzzi, and shelves and shelves full of fresh, white cotton swabs...Cotton swabs in mason jars, cotton swabs in plastic boxes, cotton swabs in my ears, my eyes, my heart... ten little cotton swabs poking holes in the left side of my chest. Q-tips are the best because they've got more pure cotton on the end of the stick than any other brand! Unfortunately, my hotel provides only two cotton swabs wrapped in a plastic bag, and they're the cheap kind with so little cotton at the ends that the sharp plastic handle cuts through and irritates my skin. Garbage.

I walk out onto the balcony and toss these two good-for-nothing, cheap, non-Q-tip brand cotton swabs onto the ground. Two cotton swabs in a plastic baggie blow across the golden sands and into the pristine, azure waters of the Pacific... Hmm... The brochure made it all seem so attractive. Now that I'm here, now that I've been confronted with two cheap plastic cotton swabs, I feel like I've wasted my money. The sun is too hot, the sand is too sticky, the ocean is too salty, the lining of my swimsuit is probably ruined forever by the wads of seaweed and grainy sand stuck in it... Oh well, there's always next vacation... Maybe someplace cold next. Canada. Alaska. Iceland.

I close my eyes and imagine my two cheaply made, good-for-nothing, non-Q-tip brand cotton swabs drifting through the waters, traveling through miles and miles of ocean to reach the cold ice waters of the Arctic. They pass schools of shimmering silver fish, a vicious looking barracuda, a blue shark with wide black eyes and graceful fins, dolphins frolicking in the first sunrays of life-giving dawn, the deathly gray and white carcass of a whale being mobbed by sharks...

My cotton swabs take a wrong turn at the Alaska and California current juncture and head south along the coast of United States of America. They pass prodigious freighters, harbor seals, stingrays, a pink plastic shopping bag... At a crowded California beach my little baggie of cotton swabs is ripped open by a sharp glass bottle. And thus ends the great love story of my two broken-hearted, good-for-nothing, non-Q-tip brand little cotton swabs as the once High school sweethearts forge their separate ways through the wide, blue sea. Whew, those suntanned California girls sure can cause a deal of trouble! But hey, after all 88.9% of cotton swab marriages end in divorce...

And that's how one of my little cotton swabs ended up in the arms of another. His new love is a sweet little thing. Yup, a cheap plastic cotton swab and a bright yellow Pacific Seahorse... Cupid surely knows his game...