Braids and the Meaning of Life

As a child, I was in awe of girls with braids. Girls whose hair was set in strictures like Sunday sermons. I saw how hair could be parted in one quick stroke, the sharp bite of the comb moving down the scalp. How their braids lay thick as whips along their back. Even the coarsest hair could be mastered with toothy combs and tubes of gel. But I was a strubbly child. My hair stood out, defiant, headstrong. Uncontainable. I kept trying to learn the art of braiding with my dolly, twisting and turning two clumps of hair around each other―but I could never form a braid until I watched my friend’s mother separate her hair into three equal strands I could follow as they took turns winding over and under each other. So much of life, I found, is composed of three, like the primary states of matter. Even the pole star, it seems, is really three stars in one. Not to mention the three-person God I tried to divine at school. That strange family of men. Is it some stubbornness that makes me need a third proposition to defy life’s Either/Or? A theory like a braid, whose even coils I longed to feel, twining down the center of my back.

This piece was featured in Volume 4. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.

Lunar Logic

There is a prequel and a sequel, then the cataclysm returns to its chrysalis, an odorless and colorless but very viscous liquid. It's been nanoseconds since my last deathbed confession. Be my albatross or alibi or flying folding chair.

There is a shoe for every scorpion, and every scorpion is in its shoe. Causation is only a partial order. At one end of every spectrum is an oxymoron; at the other, a redundancy. The continents have shifted in submission.

I thought you were serious until you said, But seriously. Just give me a place to pirouette, and I'll say it's an honor to be othered. Do you take the absentee to be an absolute? Each ethical dilemma is a trolley problem and—

today's the day the great apes have their picnic. I pronounce them separate entities. They want to know when will the bliss kick in. If I'm no angel, you're no angel. Keep your hands and feet where I can see them.

Although Sisyphus goes bowling with Narcissus, Sisyphus is no Narcissus. Quadrupeds are penitent and up in arms. This segue takes place in the nth dimension, and the tango and the bossa nova take the credit and the blame.

The butterfly was in the Bible but was only joking. That catastrophe accompanies the rapture is a given. In a bubble, I'm as probable as not. The butterfly said rest in peace but didn't mean it. Breathe on this piano, and it will go out of tune.

This piece was featured in Volume 3, Number 3. Click here to explore other pieces from this issue.