Hair
A prose poem
Autumn in Amsterdam. On the bus feeling the lingering bitterness of an afternoon ‘tea’. The bus started to heave up and down, like having chronic bronchitis for lungs. A bald man seated in front of me had strands of thick black hair sprouting out of an empty patch on the back of his head, kind of like black curly fries. His fast growing strands are transforming into a nest of fidgety twisty snakes. Is this a bus or tram, now lumbering and jerking forwards. I feel compelled to leap off, whilst fighting anxiety creeping around my insides. Sinking with heaviness by the minute, I try to persuade these unrecognisable heavy legs to move. Steady has me now. I look out and see a tree with long spinous branches frostily reaching for the ground, as if extending for a warm embrace. At its foot, stagnant waters begin swirling in a slow circling whirlpool, like the balls of stars swirling in Van Gogh’s blue Starry Starry Night. I did not notice the missing stars that day. Though I had never forgotten the man with curly fries for hair. The long excruciating moments seeing into, and into the between, the invisible felt passages of passing time. This strange sensation of stasis produced around physical paralysis, as if the body is protesting that when the being is still, the waters will rise.
