Cut to Dandelion Fluff
Weeds Grow Into Flowers
The garden grows into a jungle overnight
I don't remember when it exactly bloomed
But its neat-cut grass became waist high
Seeding with sharp beads that scatter
Scratching at palms and catching ankles
It is growing quite wild and unruly there
In the increasingly brewing summer heat
The gardeners have even abandoned the space
Left their tools behind for the hedges to grow
For their fingers to wonder and hold them close
While the weeds sprout in every centre, edge and corner
Calling on the blades to be handled and reshaped
Cut and pulled out of its endless reaching place
Thorn from the roots that etch deep below
Dropped, coated with paint, poison and lemonade
But the lands unruliness doesn't listen to man
It will keep on regrowing and expanding
No matter how many times cut and touched
For the weeds must flower to the sun
In white Daisies and yellow Buttercups
And Dandelions who transform their manes
To shed them into white wisp strains
Becoming wishes for children that chase them
Crowns for those who try to braid them
Or shinning glow torches held under chins
They will, with their weedy weeding flowers
Return with folk and drifting cheer
Uninvited, undesired- there is no cutting away
What is always there ready to sprout and stay
Summer air has started to stick, though spring has still a lot of catching up to do with its late bloom. You sit on the old cold tile floor holding a jacket close as the air picks at your arms though your bare feet are warm. Your hands continuously run through your hair that’s gotten too long for your head and weighs you down with its broken ends. The strands split and cut like petals being pulled from a bud, they gather unknowingly, in growing heaps on the floor. It reminds you of days when you sat crossed-legged on schoolyard grass, pulling up strands and tying knots. Pulling flowers for love sick songs and crushes that won’t last long.
Those cuts don’t vanish here- into the green fields, they stare back at you like black ink to a page. It doesn’t calm the worry or the need to chop it all off, as if all the anxious energy will disappear from your thoughts and fidgeting hands will stop wriggling once it is all gone. Better yet you should shave it, start anew, leave it bare and wait for the hair to resprout again as it all looks too broken, misshapen and has started moulting in places- miscut, mismatched strands. You don’t know if it's the thoughts or the heat of the season that is making it all stick and ick and feel so wrong, but its presence feels constant, tangled and strong.
Your hands move in different itching cycles, they go through clawing at nails that feel easy to cut, peel bare from their hinges, strings of spare fabric to pull from jackets, making more continuous knots to unknot- your mother says Stop, that is in fact bloody well enough. She pulls you up from the floor and brushes you off, looks at your hair and sees where the worry and boring jitters are visibly showing. She pats the strands down and tucks them behind your ears with a slightly worried smile before declaring it is a day for cutting hair.
You peel yourself from your stuck place and meet your knees on the cooling side of the bathroom tub. Hair gathered and shower head held, you bend your head over to the water where your wild hair flows down into a twisting waterfall. The cold water oozes into your scalp and over your eyes, drowns your ears without drowning you. You feel immersed in the water stream though the rest of your body be dry. It only becomes drowning when the water spills across your nose and you quickly pull away from the water’s grasp. With a shake and eyes flinching, a dry towel becomes wet, hair becomes less soaking, with droplets falling across your neck and shoulders, trailing down wrists and hitting bare feet to those cold tiles to where you finally sit down on a bare ageing chair.
The heat is still on a high as your legs stick and snap to the chair legs and strong sunlight beams in bright, reflecting off the buildings of the other side. You stare straight out of the window glass, wondering how much of the world could peer in and see as you rest in the shadow curved by the burning midday sun. Is it cooler on the pavement in front than in the room where the sun has yet to directly touch? You attempt to sit still like a statue, stiff, unmoving as mum draws out clips and scissors from a stripy drawstring bag. Combs and brushes out the strands that still knot no matter how many times you brushed them off. She twirls your hair and gathers them in sections, pinning them tight above to be cut into layers and layers. They twirl around two crowns that cause your hair to never know its direction. The tightness hurts and tugs in sharp pains that numb and your head goes from somewhat wet and cold to a low dry burning warm. Feet start to bruise blue from the pressure in your legs, though you don't notice the tension you've placed to keep them still. They hang ever so slightly above the ground, toes crossed together hoping today's result won’t go horribly wrong.
Snip, nothing comes down, Snip, a sparkle of rain, Snip, a light rain shower, SNIP, a thunderstorm. Hair rains down on your head like incoming rain clouds, it sticks to your arms, your shirt, your legs and rests on the arch of your feet. It feels like a world of time is being chopped off from short seconds to minutes, to long overbearing months. Mother cuts and cuts, cutting off locks of damaged splitting hair that morph away leaving short fluffy strands that dance ever so lightly from a gentle open window gust. With it follows fluffy wishes of moulding dandelions from the garden below, drifting in a similar motion. It is the time of day when pollen rises, hay fever burns into the eyes, nostrils and itching down throats. You try your hardest to keep your head still without tilting or urking in movement or from sudden explosive sneezing-allowing your eyes to follow the fluffs as they dance. A small sharp breath leaves your mouth and sends them spinning back right out, one however stays out of reach- slowly sitting down on open faces of palms. Eyes downcast you watch the single dandelion fluff strand rest in its shedding, wondering how convenient it is that it has found its way to you on your own cutting day.
The word done is uttered, the floor is a graveyard of different fragments, the chair has burnt marks into tights and the clips are placed back into the striped drawstring bag. Your eyes dart away at the strands that fall forward, when they return to your palms that fluff is gone gone gone. Lost to the strands or the air that flows. Your hair does not look too different from those shedding dandelions, for the minutes that pass- hair still rains down, rains down when you walk, rains down when you sit, rains down when you shower and even when you turn in your sleep. Hair seems to still follow you till the wind blows all the loose snipped strands away from the short mane that remains till you forget its length. Blow them like dandelion fluff, out to the unknown in odd places and trapped spaces, not to return home. Only for you to remember them when your hair regrows into weeding ways and flowering days.
© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian