The chair wobbled a little as she settled into it, metal legs sinking into the dust of the street. The noise of the city wrapped around her—horns, footsteps, engines coughing to life—but it all felt far away now, like sound heard underwater.
She closed her eyes just as the first pass of the blade touched her scalp.
It was colder than she expected. A clean, deliberate pull. Hair loosened, slid, fell. She flinched instinctively, then exhaled and stayed still. The barber worked carefully, one hand steadying her head, the other guiding the razor in slow, practiced strokes. Each pass stripped away another piece of what she’d carried for years.
At first, she felt exposed. Vulnerable. Every scrape of steel felt loud, intimate. The breeze found places it had never touched before, and her skin tingled in protest. She scrunched her face, not from pain exactly, but from the strange intensity of it—this surrender, this visibility, this moment happening in the open.
But then something shifted.
With every stroke, the weight on her head grew lighter. Memories tied up in curls and waves fell away onto the ground, joining the dust. Expectations. Old versions of herself. The noise of the street started to feel like a witness instead of a threat.
She breathed more deeply.
When the barber paused to wipe the blade, she opened her eyes for a second and caught a reflection in a cracked mirror leaning against a shopfront. One side of her head was bare now—smooth, unfamiliar, undeniably hers. She didn’t look weaker. She looked awake.
The final strokes were gentle, almost ceremonial. When it was done, the barber brushed away the last loose strands with his palm. She reached up without thinking, fingers grazing her newly shaved scalp. Warm. Real.
She smiled—not big, not performative. Just a quiet, private smile.
The city kept moving. Autos rolled past. People glanced, then looked away. But she stayed seated for a moment longer, grounded in the feeling of it: the air on her skin, the lightness in her body, the sense that something had ended and something else had just begun.
She stood up different than she had sat down.