long hair

When I was twelve years old, I wore my hair in two long braids that swished through the air around me like whips. These I used indiscriminately as ribbons to make the cat play, brushes to be dipped in paint, or as ropes from which to hang things. I would get up extra early each morning while my mother brushed and combed my nodding head. From these morning I date my current reservations about long hair. Long hair, barbaric accessory, hair that one cherishes in secret for secret purposes, that one displays twisted or braided and conceals when it is disheveled. Unbound it irritates sensitive skin, confuses a wandering hand.

There is just one moment, in the evening, when the pins are withdrawn and the shy face shines out for an instant from between the tangled waves; and there is a similar moment in the early morning. And because of these two moments everything I have just written against long hair counts for nothing at all.

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