Haircut Day

Sabrina Lu ‘29

I have always been bound by my long hair, twisted up and choked by it; still always saying it’s the one thing I have left, meaning it more than my throat could ever muster. I relished the way the ends dug into my skin—the chokehold of it—take it away and you take away everything. There was one thing from ribs to skin to fingernails that I could stand, so any fault to it was a fault to my whole body. Any fault in it was a fault in me, so I held it like I was both the rider and the horse, my hair the reins that would never let me go—never let myself breathe. 

And it was haircut day. And all my life I had gone to the same place, soothed by the wash, devastated by the cut. But all it had ever been was devastation: one that writhed for a bit and then settled, deep enough in the stomach that I thought I’d never see it again. It gathered and gathered and it was haircut day. It was haircut day and my stomach ached. 

The first mistake was always the same: going to a hairdresser who only spoke Cantonese when I couldn’t speak back. When I was younger I didn’t mind it, not caring enough to want to have any input at all. But this time my mother told the man standing behind me what length she wanted it, and I said no. I said no and no one heard me. The second mistake was not feeling empowered enough to repeat it. 

I felt each cut like pricks to my head, thousands of them dulling my skull and brain and skin, and I felt the salon cape like it was Earth and I was Atlas, my hands refusing to fidget from beneath it, horrifyingly still like I was no longer autonomous. And still I would not—could not—move when it was done, the length of it too short, too ugly, too wrong. My hands tightened on the reins, and they pressed against my throat, and my stomach hurt. And my hair lined the floor like a ritualistic circle, my body forever the sacrifice. When I got in the car home, I could barely even cry, as if I was waiting for permission to—and only months later did I let the reins go—and I cried, and I cried, and I cried. 

~Haircut Day (August 31st, 2023)

Edited by Ariana Spanopoulos ‘26