Delilah

The hair is the first thing to go.

Two days after his departure
I sit straight backed in a barber’s chair, blonde hair
draped like a cape over my shoulders, bottoms dripping
onto the black swath of fabric meant to protect my skin from stray strands.
I stare at myself in the mirror as the stylist assembles her arsenal.
I look tired. Sleep has not haunted me for days, since before he left.
She asks what I want.
Shoulder length. Movement. Anything but what it is right this moment.
When I hear the crisp sound of scissors cutting through hair follicles,
I feel defiant. No turning back now. She continues cutting carefully, her small talk
sidestepping the land mines hidden in casual conversation.
There is no mention of relationships, dating, no question as to why
I suddenly needed 8 inches lopped off.
She must have lots of women come in for the same reason. Maybe we have a look.

I was growing it out for the wedding, I confess silently.
I had visions of soft fairy tale curls and garlands of flowers weaved throughout.
Pink cheeks and pearly eyes and a beautiful flowing floral dress.
There may have even been songbirds.
I would have been a scene out of a Disney movie
and I would have loved it.

Then he left. With no words—no actual words—to me, he turned and left town 
16 hours on a motorcycle
Cruising past mountains and desert
Run, run, run, as fast as he can.

Two years. I’ve been growing it for that long.
 It hung in my face and tangled into impossible knots
so it often sat clumped in a ponytail at the back of my head
and quite honestly I hated it.
But I clung to the pretty pretty princess vision I had going since I was five,
and I grew it out, and he said he loved it.
Every day he said he loved it
and it was beautiful
and he’d be sad to see it go.

When he left, that vision—
Our relationship—
my entire life—
shattered like pieces of stained glass.
Shards rained down,
stuck in my hair
sliced my arms
ground to dust and choked my lungs.
I emerged scarred, numb,
No longer willing to carry any extra weight,
no longer willing to be beautiful for him.

So I cut it. Back to the length it was when I started. Two years gone.
Five years gone. Months and months of kisses and fights,
inside jokes and missing,
wanting and needing and cherishing
obliterated with the click of a mouse
and the rev of a motorcycle engine.

I want to tell her all this, but she never asked. She just cuts, and cuts, and cuts,
and tells me about her roommates in the apartment in the Avenues.
If she did ask she wouldn’t know what to say. Nobody ever does.
It’s almost become a replacement for the apology: “I don’t know what to say
because I don’t want to choose sides
and I don’t want to make it worse
so instead I will say something that really means nothing at all.”
And I take it, cling to it even, because there’s nothing left to do at this point.
There’s no justification, there’s no defending, there’s just two sides to every story,
and this is mine. And this is why I’m in a barber’s chair,
hacking off the eight inches of hair that I suffered through for two years
for someone who took thirty seconds to leave me.

Hair splays out on the rubber floor mat like grass cuttings
and I feel biblical.