8

There’s hair on my bathroom wall,

curled, bent, folded into a crippled unit,

a coiled eight, infinite, eternal,

a boundless knot,

twisted rope,

a piece of lace,

burned with split ends, unhealthy,

unbrushed,

a circuit of two mundane rings,

a merry-go-round, a Ferris wheel,

a pair of binoculars,

dark and unknown, a mystery,

little proteins from the skull they once bit into,

gripping tightly with the tips of their teeth,

holding on for dear life,

inpatient for the broken promises

to rip them apart from their pores,

promises now unspoken of,

and forgotten like the books of yesterday,

like the names of those buried underground,

but I see them,

planted on my wet tiles,

staring back at me, teasing me,

slowly falling, drooping,

posing like the roses, the daisies,

the wilted flowers you buy

and place on a lover’s grave,

remembering the moments of laughter,

too hard you almost pee,

a lost memory now I see,

found on my bathroom wall,

follicles of rotten spaghetti,

untouched, unbothered,

neglected in the back of a brown pantry,

expired, decayed,

a meal among the dead,

harmful to eat, fatal, lethal, foul,

a bearded scent to flee, a hiccup,

a web of tangled lies to feed—

because darling,

my hair isn’t black,

so who is she?