The haircut

Fotografia de Jonathan Borba

A woman came down the hill from her farm
with her two little children
to have her neighbor cut
her long, dazzling, strawberry blonde hair.
The center of things
was the round oaken kitchen table.
She sat on a stool
with a sheet up to her neck
while the two year old boy
nestled between her legs
and the baby girl slept
on a friend's shoulder.
The neighbor began to cut
a decade's growth of tresses,
passing the snips to her daughter
who laid them out on the morning paper.
The woman consulted her mirror
from time to time,
smiling with a mild terror.
When the neighbor was finished
the woman beamed with her new short haircut.
I feel like someone else, she said,
gathering up her children,
whereupon the parcel of severed hair
rose from the table
and followed them up the hill.

George Bogin