The Golden Hair

 The room is full of a thick burning odor that gently tightens my throat. The rippling flames of the fireplace endlessly repeat to climb up the air and sit down again. Devastated, they gather around Howard's golden strand of hair. They put their hands on him like in the baptism and their warmth is delivered to a part of him. The golden hair illuminates like a little flash, and it becomes dust that I breathe. As the ashes fly into the room, I start to talk in a low voice as if I was reading to myself.

 Howard looked like a white soap. His fair forehead was carved into broad and angular rectangles. His long and slender hands were like the branches of a birch. His sharp chin, and the corner of his eyes, made him look rebellious, yet with the eyelids, drowsily covering his pupils like moss, he looked mild as the smile of vanilla sky. That was all I knew of him. We never shared a conversation, nor knew each other in childhood. He was a dot sitting across from me, leaving the universe to fill the silence between us. My parents never understood why I acted the way I did at his funeral. Teachers wondered if I was having trauma from seeing him jump. They sent me to a therapist at school.

 I visited her this afternoon. She was that chubby middle-aged woman I saw in the cafeteria from time to time. She was always reading a fashion magazine, but I never saw her do makeup or hair. She always put on a baggy one-piece as if pants are too laborious for her. She would squint the corner of her eyes at my observative gaze.

 “So, what's troubling you?” She spoke with a steady voice, pointing me to a chair. I was surprised at her voice. It was melodic in a mild way like the taste of water. Her voice was transparent, yet firm like thick velvet. 

 “Nothing,” I answered. I had no intention of speaking my mind to a stranger. It was like cutting my stomach with a knife to me, holding my guts with ignorant pride in front of others' disgusted faces.

 “Can you tell me what happened at the funeral?”

 “I thought you were there too, weren't you?”

 “But will you remind me once again?” She wouldn't budge.

 “I went up to Howard and cut his hair with a scissor.”

 His funeral was beautiful. Someone even said that the sky was too joyful for the death of an adolescent. The gravestone was carved with elegant bracken patterns that framed the words for condolence. Teachers in black ties and shoes, his parents with their pale faces, and his classmates, oppressed with the gravity of death they cannot even comprehend. It was not a funeral for Howard. They were simply commemorating death itself, not Howard's death.

 When it came to my turn to say goodbye to Howard, I stepped up close. His eyes were closed but somehow I could imagine them opened. His pale slender hands were put together like the quior's polite hands as if to say sorry. His cheeks were pasted with pink blush, making him look like a peaceful angel in his mischievous teenage.

 I pulled out a scissor from my front pocket and cut Howard's hair. At first, nobody noticed, since everybody was extremely annoyed by the cry of Howard's mother. Such a scream out of pure pain was hard to put up with. It was scratching everyone's mind like fingers scratching the blackboard. It disabled people to feel sympathy, but horror. Complete horror at the fact that something so terrible had happened. It vaguely rang their minds that were paralyzed by shock.

 Then, one of my classmates found out and pointed at me. Making a real mess and frenzied gesticulation over me, he called out an exclamation. My mother grabbed the scissor out of my hand while my father tried to pull me away from the coffin. The screech of Howard's mother was not faltered. Though I saw his father wincing his lips at me, seemingly trying to curse me. Still, I got a few of Howard's blond hair. It was thin and light as one thread of silky feather hair. I put that into my pocket and got out from the funeral without a word. Meanwhile, everyone was shouting at me. Though I couldn't hear a thing and I wasn't intending to hear any, it was quite a scenery to see their faces all radiant and angry like a bunch of ignorant animals.

 “I asked, why did you do it?” The therapist popped in out of nowhere.

 “I wanted to give a second funeral to Howard. I cannot borrow his body, right? So I thought maybe some hair might be more appropriate.” 

 “Why do you think that he needs a second funeral?” She made my plan sound so lame. Like it is a childish play and I am just a spoiled kid looking for attention. I wanted to burst into denial to her face.

 “Because nobody in the first funeral understood or cared for him. They were all just afraid of what had happened - maybe except for Howard's parents.”

 “Don't you think it is rude to cut the dead one's hair?”

 “I know, but it was for Howard.” She gave me a suspicious look and made me wait for nothing in that chair for minutes. She appeared again at the door and sat again.

 “Life is tough but it is that way for everybody. You don't have to snap all the time to make others realize that.” She gave me a hand cream and dismissed me. 'Happy scent gives you a happy feeling' was written on it. There is this look in her sagged eyes, but I am confused whether it's pitty or contempt. I sniff at the cap of the hand cream and it smells lavender on rainy days, sour and sweet like purple.

 I walked out of the white aisle. Under the aligned lights on the ceiling, it looked like an elongated unworldly road extending forever. To wash off the feeling of numbness, I open the door and walk into the beaming sunlight. It hits me so hard, I feel like I will evaporate into sanitized powder of dust.

 I wait until the night comes, until my parents leave the house for a show, until everything that puzzles me and disrupts me gets out of the front door like going through a watering hole.

 I flick a match to light the fireplace that was asleep for a decade. I release the fire in the middle of the firewood, and it spreads slowly, eating up the air, inspecting the inch by inch of the fireplace, reminiscing. I pull out Howard's hair from my pocket. And drop it strand by strand. I start to talk.

 “I wanted to say goodbye to you. Though I don't know you, I think I understand you.

 They say that the world is a gift, but the world is also a cage. Because it is built by ideologies and buzzing thoughts of people, it is stronger than the jail built by iron bars. When you are locked in a world. Your eyes are covered with blinding numbness and darkness comes crawling to your feet in the shape of despair.

 When people whisper with toxic intent in their mouths, it erodes you into a feeling of being insignificant. Words are like the pebbles thrown your way. The scornful look, the detest - anger rushes in, leaving only futility in your stomach.

 Howard, I wanted to jump on what you did. Standing on the edge of the rail on a high bridge, I looked down at the same asphalt ground gleaming in the slanting sunlight. I climbed over the fence and even placed myself on the other edge. My eyes were lost in the sweet breeze, the silent summer air, and the deepening green of the bushes. I looked around, thinking this is the last time I see the summer glowing. But my hands wouldn't let me go. My hands, clenched the bar of the fence so hard to crash it - they wouldn't let me fall.

 I want to die to be reborn. I want to leave my broken and rusted mind and relive my life as a blank slate. I want to feel the life inside of my body again.

 I want to ask you one favor. Would you deliver a part of me to death? Would you kill a part of me instead of my grudging hands?”

 I cut my hair with scissors. The fire eats my black hair. I cut it until I turned almost bald like the day of my birth.

 I look into the mirror and I cannot recognize myself. I try to smile, stretching my cheeks with my fingers. I soften the tension on my lips, rolling forefingers over it. I smile and it looks like a painting. It looks like a smile from another time, from the time I never lived.

I put on make-up. The brush spreads brownish-white liquid over my face. It raps around me comfortingly. I tap it like caressing. I dip the powder with the brush and sprinkle the white dust like a blessing. It shimmers like the dust of stars. I open my closed lips slightly to put on a rouge. It is radiant with the rich color of red.

 I mouth hello to myself in the mirror. I lean to it, and kiss the cool surface of the mirror, leaving the mark of red rouge on it. I leave.

 That night, the lamps were pushing away the darkness as far as they can. The stars were swiveling in the breeze as if they were floating buoys without destination.