You fill it up. And it fills up and.
you’ve filled it up. And there it is.
it takes two years for my hair to
grow twenty-four centimeters. I
cut it off and start that two years
over. Cut and grow. Cut and grow.
None of the hair I have now, knew
you when you still knew me. You
go away and come back a different
person. You go away and come back
to different people. My old woman
loses speech, then memory then she
is scared by your husband when he
comes into the room. The hair on
her arms she has meticulously re-
moved for years, moves like sea-
weed as we move around her cup-
board. Her minimum wage caregiver
soft and soft and soft. Water into a
bath. She laughs for your father. You
do not. I shave parts of my skull to
the scalp. To the floor. A centimeter
is three weeks. Maybe four. You hold
my neck and tell me not to lean away
from the clippers. Don’t lean away
from the clippers. Don’t lean away.
By Emma Barnes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License.
Mix & Mash 2011 - Literature Remix Category http://www.mixandmash.org.nz/
