The Ends

I invested in the seventeen-dollar brush, but still came out looking drowned. Not even boar bristles can save you from hair that hangs like kelp.

“Are you too focused on the crown?” Meadow is a shaman. It is better for the world that she works undercover as Chief Stylist at Village Cuts Salon. Our species is insufficiently evolved to absorb her wisdom. She will apply foils until we are ready.

“The crown?”

She pokes me in the ponytail. “Up here?”

“That’s where I start.” She knew but wanted me to confess. “For volume.”

Meadow shakes her head. She tugs the algae around my chin, as though to knot it in a bonnet. “Always begin with the ends.”

I need to lie down to process this. Then the cat starts licking my eyelids. There is a time for contemplation and a time for action. I put my head in the kitchen sink. I get a renegade grain of riced cauliflower in my bangs. I wonder if Thomas Merton ever had this experience.

I ask the boar who gave its bristles to pray for me. I ask the Spirit who blows without permission to indwell my hands. I ignore the top and bend the ends. They curl. They remain in good cheer even after I deal with the crown. I am no longer the Wreck of 1981.

In the event of revelation, I always call my mother. She has vested interests in hair and metaphysics, if indeed these are distinct fields.

“Focus on the ends. I think it’s because they are thin and light.”

“They are fickle.” My mother is not unwise to the thuggery of ends. “I will try.”

My mother calls back. She sends evidentiary selfies. She looks like Sally Field. She recognizes the gravity of this day. “This is a miracle.”

I contemplate calling the New York Times tip line on behalf of drowned persons everywhere. Instead, I assess myself in the mirror for numerous minutes, wondering if I have just gone from a three to a five.

Beholding myself reminds me of an unsatisfactory essay I have been unable to place with any literary journal. I have sent it to both The Paris Review and Bandicoot Hamburger Diarrhea, whose masthead contains zero persons of voting age. I have sent it to all the publications in between, ninety percent of which are titled River Blue or River Review or River of Many Tadpoles. No one will bite, not even when I offer a free hand-drawn cartoon of Thomas Merton as a riverboat captain.

But today, my life has been bisected. There is new hope for orphan words. I see it plainly. My essay frizzes into incoherence where it should lie smooth upon the shoulders. The wisps get in its eyes, and it cannot stick the landing. I have neglected the ends, and editors have bristled.

I soak my syntax with dishwater. I apply heat. I commiserate with the last line. It does not need my forgiveness. We are two of a kind. I vibrate as I edit. The old toad has donned a tiara.

I rename the essay Endgame. I submit. Under the eyebrows of “Unfortunately…”, River of Whey reports that I made it to the final round of consideration. I should try again. “Every story is a new beginning!” I do not disagree. There is a time for revision and a time for fried potatoes. I take myself to Burger King and wear the paper crown all the way home.