Troubled Existence

I feel troubled by the concept of existence.

Every few weeks, I sit in the kitchen in my underwear, nearly bare, so that Valerie can give me a haircut. She uses a hair clipper, a tool inappropriately named since it shaves massive clumps of locks in a single pass not a single row of hair as described.

If a crime were to be committed in my kitchen, in addition to the other bits of DNA evidence, they would find tiny hairs containing strands of my own biological blue prints. Hair is just as serious as fingerprints, as serious as semen.

Actually, when Valerie cuts my hair, she uses a large clip to bind the long bangs into nest atop my crown; she uses a pair of shears to trim the hairs growing from the rest of my head before applying the mechanized clippers to the same hairs. Locks fall unto a ratty towel and fall onto the linoleum floor. The clippers will grow to hot for her hands if she holds on to it too long.

Sometimes, as the clippers run through my scalp, it pulls at my hair, especially if Valerie moves with swift hands.

In the end, there is a battlefield of hairs on the chair I'm sitting in, on the towel, and on the floor. Our cats, who have been watching from a safe distance, on padded paws strolled into the aftermath, finding a bit of loosened locks to bat around giving false life to something already dead, maybe something dead from the start.

Rumor has it that a corpse's hair continues to grow for a period of time after death.

I rub my left hand across my sandpaper scalp, go the front porch where I flick the towel into the night air, and let loose tiny bits of me float away from me. Where will I go? What will I become?

I rinse under the shower as the rest of my disconnected self either gathers around the drain or slips through the sieve to mingle with feces, urine, and other waste products, not only mine, but of my neighbors.

Somewhere in this city there is stockpile of genetic material if anybody needs some.