sometimes at 10:37pm you need to change your life

Content Note: abuse (no graphic details)

so you do the next best thing 
and you cut your hair

you follow a youtube video 
and a confident-man-hair-stylist-type 
shows you how using a mannequin head and swift movements

on your turn you take two ponytails 
and the shittiest pair of scissors money can buy 
and you snip away at your kinda-long hair 
until it becomes less long and hopefully more shape 

arms overhead  
you’re diving

into what no one can say
 
today was the first day of April 
you got rejected from a job opportunity 
you remembered it’s your abuser’s birthday

you sit on one friend’s porch and don’t talk about it

you sit on another’s futon and you do

the night wears on
the day folds in on itself and you catch 
a glimpse of your body in the toothpasted mirror

arms overhead 
you’re picking fruit

we’ve seen this before

in fact we saw you in this exact position six months ago 
in a stranger’s bathroom using arts n craft scissors
 
you saved the hair before immediately losing it
 
one day sooner or later you might find a bundle of your locks 
wrapped up in a sheet of printer paper with November 24th 2024 
scrawled on it in green crayon 

there is so much you cannot control but you can choose 

the crayon     
the scissors     
the bathroom where you’ll cut our hair the next time you have to do something

and you can choose what you do when that is no longer enough.    

the cover of a mini zine which has a scanned background image of my hair in wavy black clumps and in orange scraps of paper with black text it reads “sometimes at ten thirty-seven you need to change your life”

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ps. this is quite literally a rough draft but I felt moved to share it! A pal shared a wonderful poem from their future self and it got me thinking about the many-me’s which witness present-me, which is informed by past-me, which informs future-me… on an on. lotsa thinking n feeling. ty for joining me as i dig into it.