Cut

My hair grows grey, but the old stuff, dyed and mistreated, hangs on the end. I tried to salvage, but it turns a sickly orange that glares brassily at me through the mirror, in my peripheral vision, weighing me down.

I have embraced my greying, aging hair, evidence of middle age and mortality, but I was enjoying the pension of long, neglectable tresses. My inept attempts to hurry along the process frustrate me, and I chop, and chop, and chop it away, pruning clumsily.

Now I must break my vow to never attend another salon or barbershop. I must allow a short, neat, haircut, to endure. I would buzz it all away, like a sheep on a lawn, nearly pulling it all up by the roots. But I have lived that before, knowing the shaggy awkwardness of middling growths, menopausal adolescence. And I don't want it, in the midst of financial difficulty and personal distresses.

There is no choice, though. I must tolerate a professional cut.

"Cut off all the orange, and make it neat, and I will be content. Make it fast, and I will be ecstatic." I will say to the barber, and hand over my eight dollars. I will not complain, only sigh. Long hair comforted me, but I did this to myself, screwed up, fucked up, muddled and fumbled. Now, I must correct, and endure the consequences. I've been here before, a kind of jail, or probation, I must simply accept and move on.

Like a muddy spring, a cool season of discomforts, daylight savings time too early, allergies and snowmelt dirt. I molt and itch.