PHANTOM PAIN
It took me three trips to the mirror to get over my radical haircut. When I looked a fourth time, I was convinced all was well. Good riddance, I thought to myself. Besides, one can never have too little hair amid this heat.
The absence of hair has a way of making its presence felt, though. When I’m tired or annoyed or confused, I comb through it. When I wake, I give it a tug. When the wind blows I fix it. It’s as if my subconscious still has hair.
It is said that when one is amputated, he sometimes feels as if the limb he has lost is still there. The sensation can be tingling or ticklish, but more often than not painful. Phantom limb, they call it. Is this phantom hair I’m feeling now?
What of the phantoms that become of the people that leave us? I still fight the urge to reach across the bed in the morning, hoping I would feel you curled up beside me, snoring or singing and willing to be embraced.
The consolation in this misery is that at least the phantom lingers. For in the same manner that a phantom limb can be felt only if the limb once existed, I guess people leave man-shaped holes in our hearts only if they truly lived in it.