I Shaved My Head

I shaved my head in the sink

I left the water running

I watched my hair block the drain

And on the bathroom's flooding ground

Built no ark for myself

I longed for end times coming

I understood what it meant

To need to kill and reset

This stranger standing reflected

With my old image blending

Inside the mirror before me

The death of self portended by

All the years that I spent closing my eyes

To try to change what I'd become now in life

To die and start again

I fixed my eyes on the light above

The level rising

And let it swallow me whole

All gaps from floor to ceiling closed

Up and onto my neck

The steady water flowing

Then climbing over my head

I shut them tight to accept

As if in amber suspended

Both arms and legs extended

The pressure bending the glass

Then shattered out, and down I went

Forces pulling to the surface of Earth

Like some raptured body, played in reverse

To start and die again

Two summers passed at the bathroom sink

Just standing shirtless, cutting my beard

You came in to sit and talk

I watched you watch in the mirror

Brought the trimmer grinning up to my head

Said, "Hey, I'd never have to pay to get my hair cut again"

Her nervous laugh said, "You wouldn't—"

Interrupted when the trimmer lowered

Fistfuls of hair falling softly down

To the floor before you

And you cried for a minute when I did

Like a child who saw their father for the first time with a shaven face

A subtle change, a sudden stranger

Made and then betrayed, the shape turned unfamiliar

First I thought you were scared that I could never grow it back again

Now I see at least six months passed since you'd recognized me

A decade spent dissociating

Backwards from the past, inside alive and laughing still

A minor change in desperation

A minor change in desperation

A mirrored shape, my bent reflection made

Shaved my head to force a change, to be unrecognized