Ghosts.
I keep my hair cut short, these days. It used to be quite long. But it’s too thin to look good like that, now, and it’s ebbed back from my face like a low spring tide. So I keep it short, quite short, buzzed short for long, hot days.
Of late, though, I’ve been at home, at work on the web and ’net; I talk on the phone to most of those I work with, and I have a dearth of cash. I’ve not gone to get my hair cut for some time. It’s now as long as it has been for months.
At the end of this past week, as I walked through Old Town, the wind blew up in strong gusts, and my hair was now so long that it tossed on top of my head, a brief wild dance held fast by the roots, and I felt the ends of my hair prick my ears, and the skin of the back of my neck. It was a thing I’d not felt—I don’t want to say “for years,” but it had been a long time, a long, long time. I stopped there on the curb and felt my skin crawl down my back, down where my ribs curl in to meet my spine, pricked by the ghosts of my hair, my long hair, tossed in a long-gone wind—
(And now I stop and fret: “ghosts.” Is that one sound, or two? At first blush, one would think one, but say the word out loud, and hear it, where the “t” breaks the flow of ess to ess, and turns the breath of the word from one gust to two, or one and a half, but more, I think, than just one. And what of words that have been joined by a dash? Does “long-gone” count as two words, two sounds, or is it one word, one thought, but two sounds, joined by that small line?
(This game is hard; more work than it might seem, at first. But fun.)
