Thursday, 06.15:
Discordia
I stopped after work for a haircut, my first in two months. The tiny Asian woman was exceptionally gentle and attentive. I closed my eyes as her fingers tugged and snipped and gently pushed my head forward . . . Suddenly I remembered Randy and how, for years, he gave me all my haircuts. I would sit in a straight-backed chair in the bathroom or on the back deck and he would work with the spray bottle, scissors and comb. How lovingly, attentively, he showed his care. If there is a haircut inside the haircut—if the hair lives seven years—if my body remembers all the way back—his hands, her hands touch; they link. The buzzing clippers, the whispered scissors. The too-long locks falling, rolling down the draped cover. This public display, this private bliss. This sinking into another’s touch. This ache.
Reads in the Trees 