across wetland and train tracks, towards the place where wishes are granted
—my cut hair in my hands, my knees scraped, shivering in my raincoat.
Today is cold and grey, and dim, and windless. I press on, following the abandoned tracks, sniffling. Reeds on either side of me, and beyond them, water that would be shining on a good day. There are no birds.
I am miles from home, but my parents aren't looking for me. Why would they, when I always limp home eventually? No matter what they do, it's not like I could go anywhere else.
I wipe the rain from my eyes with the back of my arm. The absence of my hair around my shoulders feels like an unwelcome hand touching the back of my neck. I feel naked and violated.
I walk through an open gate, past the signs: UNSAFE STRUCTURE NOTICE. CONDEMNED. The end of the tracks. Broken glass underfoot. Ivy up the side of brick walls. Long-cold smokestacks.
The factory floor is empty, the machines moved away long ago. I look up, awed as no church has ever awed me before, and I hear birds taking flight at my approach. The wingbeats echo in the emptiness.
This is the place, I know it.
With shaking hands, I hold up the wet clumps of my hair that I clutched all the long walk here, and I look fearfully down at my damp shoes and my scuffed-up knees.
Please. They did it again today. I cried and I asked them not to, and I tried locking myself in my room, but I had to come out for dinner, and they grabbed me, and... and I cried and I asked them why, and they said I was a boy, but I don't see why that matters.
And when I ask them why that matters they never answer me, Dad just squeezes harder on the... on the back of—of my neck, and I get scared and I fight, I get really scared because one time Mom cut my ear while doing... this, and she never said sorry, she just rinsed the blood off the scissors and told me to hold still this time.
And I don't understand. I've seen the pictures of when Dad used to have his hair long, I've even seen the picture they took right before they made him cut it all off and anyone can see he'd been crying, so I don't understand why he doesn't understand, and...
So please, make them stop. Please make them understand, or... or maybe they'll never understand. Just make them stop. Make it so if they ever take scissors to me again there'll be blood everywhere, make them scared, or—or make them feel how I feel, like my hair is a living part of me, like it belongs to me. Please, it belongs to me...
I stop whispering into the emptiness. I feel something moving against the back of my neck. The clumps of wet hair in my hands are gone. I turn my head and find it heavy, not light like it is after my hair is cut.
I reach up with a shaking hand to touch my hair.
Snakes.
One of them licks my fingers.
