My hairdresser and my heart
My hairdresser, he’s not a beautiful man
or not in the way you were, blatantly but he’s very nearly symmetrical, which is this year’s definition of beauty and he has quick hands the colour of matches a shirt of flame-whiteness and a bitchin’ military-styled apron. Is he in love, is he hetero or gay; is he green, does he give cyclists room? It’s impossible to know what he’s like when he doesn’t know where to stand in relation to you or what to do with his hands. He moves about my head with grace and urgency, as if deactivating a bomb like Kip at the end of The English Patient the greatest love story of all time. All women deserve to be carried out of a desert cave by a crying man, to be billowed all around by a sheet. Well I hate my head at the hairdresser: big and blotted knoll on a hill, knot in a curtain. A head that belongs on a pillow only besides which you used to tell me softly I wasn’t that ugly. My fringe is snowing slowly but I feel I’m catching fire. The way we let them touch us, it’s not right is it? I don’t unplug myself the way you told me to so when my hairdresser presses down on my shoulders, my heart jumpstarts and when I leave the salon I almost go out looking for you.
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