"The Haircut," by Sharon Olds
A year after he left I thought of the day he’d been
sick and I’d cut my then-husband’s hair
to cheer him up. First I combed it,
sensing, with its teeth, the follicles
of his scalp. His hair was stiff from fever, close-
laid and flat, each plane a worn
conveyor belt come out of his head,
and his skull was flattish in back, with a hollow
in the center. I loved to eat-eat-eat
with the scissors, to chew sheaf. He was
so tall it was like tree husbandry,
childish joy of tiptoe. On his shoulders,
the little bundles would accumulate,
like a medieval painting’s kindling
dropped when a meteor passed over. He was so
handsome it was kind of adorable when he
looked horrible. His face that hour was
gaunt, the runnels of his cheeks concave, his
lower eyelids and the sacks below them
ogre-swollen, but within the rims
were the deep-sea swimmers of his eyes, the sounders,
by which I read the depth of his character, not
knowing how else but by beauty to read it,
and he closed them, he bowed, I did his nape
and patted up pinion from the floor. Before sleep,
I stroked his satiny hair, the viral
sweat creaming out at its edge, I petted his
coat and he took a handful of my hair in his
fist and gripped it. Don’t be sick,
I said, Okay, he said, and love
seemed to rest, on us, in a place
where, for that hour, it felt death could not
reach, and someone was singing, in my hearing, without
words, that no one can live without reaching
death, but I could have lived without having
loved almost without reserve, and for a
moment, then, I thought I lived forever with him.
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