Unblocking My Crown Chakra on the Bathroom Floor

by Ashley McCurry

After my divorce, I chopped off my hair with dull sewing scissors. My bathroom floor was coated in dark strands infused with our earliest memories: campfire smoke (I tried but didn’t enjoy it), burned pizza (I finally learned how to cook), and stale air from cheap hotel rooms (why couldn’t we have splurged on a nice place?). Those fallen clumps once held the scent of perfume, 60 dollar department store aphrodisiac when things began to feel “off,” as if a conscientiously sprayed mist of neurotoxins might resurrect those erotic feelings long interred. That pile of overly-straightened hair bled with red dye (you liked redheads), but the sink was filled with small pieces of breakage for months because they let the bleach process for too long at the salon. It carried the pungent burden of beer and nachos from the bowling alley, where at our friend’s 30th birthday party, you stood outside in the rain, on the phone with another woman. Ten years later, you glanced at me from across a restaurant, hair resting along my shoulders, supporting a violet crown and soaking up fresh memories and experiences without you.

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Ashley McCurry is a speech-language pathologist, MFA student, and short fiction writer living in the Southeastern United States. Perhaps more importantly, she is a rescue dog mom, cosplayer, and lover of short stories and musical theater. Her work has been published in Bright Flash Literary Review and is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine.