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Some Hair Story

When we were still together, I remember asking him (repeatedly) to cut his hair short because it would look better on him. But he wouldn’t cut it. “You sound like my mother,” he would tell me with a smile, and then drop the issue. He liked his hair long because it would save him a lot of gel, or so he would say.

Now, after not seeing or hearing from him in a almost a month, he sent me a photo of him. He shaved his head. And I don’t know why he showed me that picture. How did he want me to react? What did he want me to say?

As I look in the mirror, doing my early morning hair ritual (brushing my damp permed locks and putting light touches of styling cream), I am contemplating on showing him that I colored my hair orange. And that it doesn’t suit me. At all.

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Missing Piece

I remove the necklace from my neck. The one you gave me — silver, with a puzzle pendant. It feels cold in my hand.

Why a puzzle piece? I remember wondering, asking you if it was because I enjoy solving puzzles — the art of putting pieces together to create a meaningful picture — that you gave me this gift. You placed it around my neck, smiling at my endless need for answers. “Maybe…” you said, and with a click from the lock, your hanging response was sealed.

Days later, I asked you again. “You’re my missing puzzle piece,” you answered, your fingers gently brushing my hair. “Without you, I’d be incomplete. I’d have no meaning.”

I believed.

I wore it everyday… even after you left, like a silent prayer. Hoping, wishing, that you’ll return to me.

You haven’t.

And now as I stare at this cold silver puzzle piece, I find myself thinking. That maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe we are not incomplete pictures, looking for our missing pieces. Maybe we are already whole, and that life is actually about giving away pieces of us…

Maybe, for you, it is enough that I keep this little part of you in my hand.

That as long as I think of you, your puzzle remains whole… and the picture hasn’t lost its meaning.