The Night Is Young

Your Heart Keeps Calling Me On Three-way

Nobody Knew….where he was. Not even Claire. She called him, and went by his house and nothing. Nothing. Nobody knew anything. She didn’t even know what to tell me but she swore up and down that her cousin was better than that.

Ashley told me to chunk the deuce because a week without hearing from his was a bad sign. I didn’t know what to do.

So I took a pair of shears to the head.

Sunday evening, exactly a week from the day Nelson was supposed to leave to head back to school I found a pair of shears in a box of my mothers old hair things. They were rusty on the inside, and shiny on the outside, a sign that they hadn’t been used since she had died. The box smelled like her, cinnamon and flowers, and it was filled to the brim with her. I pushed it back in it’s closest in the living room and reminded myself to come back later and see what else I could find. Just holding the cool metal in the palm of my hands made me think of her and it was a good feeling in my time of bewilderment.

I wondered what she would have said if she’d been there those times that my heart had been broken and what would she say now? Would she brush those tiny naps at my temple back and kiss my forehead while she shushed my crying?

I wondered…I wondered.

With the pair of shears that smelled like her I tiptoed to the bathroom, my feet moved softly over the beige carpet and the tiny nubs slipped between my toes until my soles met the cool surface of the ceramic tiles. Gently I closed the door and checked between the peep for my Dad or Ashley, for once they were both home at the same time and they were sound asleep.

Ten P.m. had never been so comforting to me.

You can do this, you can do this.

I need a change.

When I woke up this morning I remembered that I had cut all of my hair off, or at least the stringy ends and in it’s place a short crop of tight curls resided.

I’m natural.

It was so drastic of me to cut off my relaxed hair, but it’s not like I wasn’t going to do it anyway…I just hadn’t planned on doing it so soon. When Daddy and Ashley saw me yesterday morning they were speechless, daddy ran his hand over the curls and Ashley taunted me with “Well I guess you’re really nappy now.”

Daddy wasn’t much approving either, I could tell from the little vein jumping in his neck that he wished that I had told him before I even touched my hair.

But that’s the thing; it’s my hair.

Mines to cut.

Mines to grow.

And now I’m walking around the park again, only this time I’m a few curly inches from being bald and I have on the biggest hoop earrings I could find to keep me from looking like a boy. That’s not really possible though, my hips and thighs and the delicate curve of the boobs I do have completely debunks that notion. My lips too, I’ve been told that I have pretty lips and eyes….

By Nelson.

He told me that.

I cried last night. I curled in a ball and remembered how much I had went through the summer for him and I cried beau coups of tears. It was so sad, I had to muffle my sobs with my comforter because I swore up and down to Ashley that I was fine.

Completely fine.

And I was completely lying.

But this morning I don’t feel like crying, because I’m all cried out from lastnight.