Care of the body (2)

L.L came over yesterday. (She has no nickname here -- she could be L-Squared, Double L, anything.) She came to cut my hair. I thought she was just going to buzz it off: The stray locks that had lengthened and congealed into strings, the mess of ex-sideburn fuzzing around my ear.

I imagined that as a kind of liberation.

But she took out her old scissors, talked about the meditation of the task, and began, with utmost delicacy, to snip away my hair. It fell away in dry little clots as the blades snipped away. I listened carefully as my hair parachuted down. I was so grateful to be free of it.