I’ve been dreaming about cutting my hair again. In the dream I am shorn, like a sheep, or like Samson was, rough hands hold me close to the scalp and dull blades saw through my hair as though it were rope, the great handful of it thinning, fraying, until at last the final strands can be sliced through in one decisive movement.

What looks like violence isn’t always, I know this.

I cut my hair dramatically only once, from waist length to just below my chin. My brother said, think of everything that’s happened while that hair was growing: it’s in there, trapped. Cut it off and let it go. In the dream it feels like liberation of a kind, but what feels like liberation isn’t always,  I know that too.

What I remember is how light my head felt after, how heavy it must have been.

When I wake in the morning after this dream my hands go up before I even open my eyes, to check. I don’t know that it’s relief I feel when I realize that it’s all still there.