Lessons in Removal

Yesterday, the plumber came
and unearthed a pound of hair
from the shower drain. A whole
mess of it, he marveled. He’d made me
come watch. Ma’am, he called—
I was hiding downstairs, pretending
to read—you’re going to need
to see this. And so I looked too.
Wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else
as he snaked it; shoved the coiled wire
farther and farther down the hole
where I imagined anything
could have been waiting—
body parts gone soft with rot;
an animal long dead. Maybe it
was poking and prodding into
a woman just like me—a woman
curled into herself like a shrimp;
a fern’s green tendril; a fetus.
Maybe that pipe was the only place
in the entire house where she could be,
just be. So one day she slipped away.
I became so convinced of this truth
that I was surprised when he lifted
the wadded tangle of hair.
Dripping with gray water. Fetid.
He held it up triumphantly,
like a fish pulled from the ocean:
photographed then left to die.
It’s only now that I’m realizing
the hair might not have been
mine at all, but hers. Ripped
from her scalp in a final yank.
A violence we ignored,
the plumber and I, as I paid and
signed. Just let me know when it
gets clogged again.