Haircutting

★ by Mar Wolf, image by Lex Morales ★

A lover and another held little meaning in my chest until it gave me anger that failed to swallow and lingered like acid reflux for two Junes and five haircuts. One of those haircuts, I did beside him in a friend-of-a-friend’s bathroom in the middle of winter. Our cheeks, the tips of our noses, were flushed and running. I asked him to check to see if they had shears, but we never opened the door. I cut upwards, letting his locks fall choppy. I asked if he cared about it being uneven in the back, but he didn’t hear me, and I didn’t ask again. In that moment, I didn’t expect myself to remember the way it felt to touch the back of his neck, like the long neck of a goose, a bird I rendered vulnerable until disturbed. It was simply a haircut in a bathroom. Maybe there would be years more. 

I shelve the seasons, compressing them as they rest in my memory. They bleed into each other as they move, as I move into the next, but then another turn comes and the rest is stiffened. Maybe the first June wasn’t as wonderful as I compressed the word to be, but new. Sometimes I think back, and wonder what type of strangers we were. 

“It was simply a haircut in a bathroom. Maybe there would be years more. “

There’s a ringing in my ear when I turn the corner, one that’s familiar to the both of us. A strip of sunlight catches the edge of the building, and I notice it’s splattered paint that coats it. I wonder if it’s been there for long, and why it was decided upon. It reminds me of something, further back than him, that feels heavy in my chest. I should just stop taking the long way and calling it a short-cut.

I forgot about the can on my windowsill, unopened still, dressed in red sharpie and half a year of dust. It gets cold in here at night, and I think it must’ve frozen at some point during the winter. If I opened it, I know it wouldn’t explode, but the symbolism is too rich to pass up, so I choose to forget about it again. Maybe I’ll wake up in six months, and I won’t even remember where it came from. 

I sat on the edge of the bed, holding a large, blown-glass lamp body. I had no space for a table, and it had rested atop the furnace for months, placeless, bulbless. He stood on the furnace now, arms stretched to the ceiling. The shirt he wore was one I remember from our first week together. I wished that the man who wore it then would seep through the fabric, become his skin and blood again — he looked down at me, and the thought drained from my head. 

I’ve learned to cut my own hair.