Cut my hair put on a shirt

You tell me about your previous client

a regular, one of your first customers

from 1999. You make it clear

you don’t often talk about people

who come into the salon

but they won’t mind. They’re not

the shy type and anyway this regular

in the salon once saved a little boy’s life

when he saw them struggling in a pond

or is that what happened?

You’re starting to doubt yourself.

Maybe they were the one in the pond

and they were saved. Either way

it’s a story of redemption

The same amount of people were alive

at the end of the story as at the beginning

which generally means a happy ending.

This regular, badly in need of a haircut,

not lots of dandruff but enough

to make you recommend a specialist shampoo

tells you little bits about their life

in six weekly intervals

and brushing hair from my shoulders,

you ask how the wedding was,

because the last time I had my hair cut

I was about to be an usher.

I look good now, I tell myself,

Looking at a mirror, well not good,

exactly but this is as good as it gets.