E.M. Lark (they/them) is a lion-maned writer, prose reader & book reviewer, originally from Southern California. Recent works can be found in Moot Point Magazine, Corporeal Lit, Penumbra Online, The Lumiere Review, JAKE, among others past and future.

hair-story: a breakdown of breakdowns

e.m. lark

While on the Brooklyn-bound Q train, you have the realization that you, as you are right now, can do whatever you want with your body. With your life. With your hair, even, which has been a defining factor of your appearance and personage for what feels like forever.

Realize that you never really absorbed all the advice you were given because it was in the frame of being a woman, and you unconsciously rejected it. You rejected anything that reminded you of the place that you were put in, such an unholy state for your body to be.

Language is powerful, you remind yourself. You’ve known this, it’s your livelihood. You hated yourself for all the times you didn’t have the words to describe your truest being, nor the courage to speak it aloud.

At eighteen you knew more than you do at twenty-five; you’re curious enough to try out that proclamation, even in the dark. Furiously write in your journal as you pass over the East River, your knees scrunched up, and the soles of your shoes pressed into the perpendicular seat. You can barely read your handwriting, but you know that the words mean everything to you.

Contemplate your newfound revelation the whole way home while listening to your specific for-every-version-of-me playlist that you made as a therapeutic exercise.

Ignore that someone else seeing this playlist would probably think it’s cringe.

Once you’re home, politely step around your roommate’s cat—who likes to weave around your feet—grab your pair of shears, and lock the bathroom door.

Fix your headphones, stare at yourself in the mirror, and contemplate what you might look like with all of it off. If this experiment works all the way, then it will be gone. You will have followed in the footsteps of so many before you.

Put it off for the next twenty to thirty minutes, pacing back and forth in your bathroom. Your hand trembles, and so the shears tremble with it. Your heart races, and your breath grows short. You’re somewhat convinced you’re going to pass out in the bathroom instead of cutting your hair.

What if they hate me for it? Am I betraying my family? you ask yourself, which hurts. Your brief euphoria from the train has ground to a halt, and it makes your chest ache.

Actually start cutting your hair. Really cut it, moving your shears through the forest of your hair.

Realize that your shears aren’t strong enough to endure the wilds of hair, barely cutting through the top layer.

Laugh. Watch the hair fall into your hand.

Remember that one of your exes said he liked girls with shorter hair, and that made you angry because you were trying to grow out your hair. You were never good with being told what to do, no matter how much of your life revolved around being a people-pleaser.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. You were never meant to fill those shoes.

Go tell one of your best friends what happened. She laughs after assuring that you’re okay, and you laugh because it’s still too fucking funny for its own good.

Put off making a hair appointment to fix what went wrong. You’ll survive.