Hair

I used to find your hair everywhere.

Miles from where they should be floating and nestling into corners of rooms.

It would be over a month since I had seen you, and still a long grey hair would be resting on my sweater shoulder, reminding me you were here, that you could never be shaken, that you were with me.

With the chemo we all knew those thick locks that you constantly brushed out of your face into a clip or barrette would fall.

shorter and shorter strands still insistent on wriggling their way into fabrics and spaces far from your presence.

What we didn’t know, didn’t think of, was the way those hairs would disappear with you. It’s been 5 months and I don’t find those hairs wriggled into the chair’s cushions anymore. I don’t pull them, static-clung, from my freshly dried clothes.

Even as I folded up your clothes to place into donation bins, the hairs were absent.

Today, thinking of a costume to wear on Monday, I considered pulling out the cardigan that lived in your classroom almost as long as I did. As I hum the theme song of the character, I think of your refrain when I stated something obvious, “Correct as usual King Friday!” I shrug on the cover, and reach to fold the buttons in their loops–and then I see a piece of silver poking through one of the knitted knots. I pinch it and slide it out–hair older than your sickness, hair determined to linger, hair to remind me, you’re still here.

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written 10/29/22, what would have been her 72nd birthday.

While Looking Up at Stratus Clouds This Evening, I Was Reminded of You (working title)

I remember an evening laying with you,
Backs down on the top deck of the Sands’ pier.
It was late, though sleep never touched our eyes
And we wandered aimlessly–morphing cumuli across the islands.

We were a living young adult novel:
Two best friends swapping secret dreams under a candid sky,
Planning for futures, for obstacles, for premature deaths
that have now long since passed.

We were like that,
Skipping from one backdrop to another,
On the brink of adulthood, invincible but perpetually fragile;
Lingering away from home each night, testing boundaries,
Blatantly symbolizing our teenage freedom.

You patted my hand and pointed at a cluster of clouds
Inching towards the moon.
“Hand of God” you murmured.
As the appendage stretched to grasp the moon in its clutches,
I responded, “Seize it! Seize it!”
My own hand reaching up too.