Pete used to complain that it got everywhere. I’d never noticed, but he was right. On the bed, on the floor, in his mouth. On the collar of my coat. I would joke that I could never have an affair with anyone because their wife would notice right away. Of course I was wrong about that.

It looks like corn silk in sunlight and just plain brown in shadow. The strands really do get everywhere. I run my fingers through it and it feels like a badly knitted scarf or a blood clot, everything intertwined, inseparable, stringy. I pull my hand away and there’s a spidery clot of the stuff. Does it grow back? Or am I slowly going bald, taking away from myself, tossing something vital out onto the bathroom floor?

Like teeth, it can be used to make charms and fetishes. It is dangerous in the wrong hands. If you believe in superstitions.

Pete used to say that I was worse than his cat. That I shed more than any animal he’d come across. I kind of liked it, though. Liked the idea that he might find blondish reminders on his pillow the next day. Liked that I was marking what I thought of as my territory, his apartment, his bed, his body. All touched by something that came from me.

And then Pete left and the cat died and his wife invited me to brunch and asked me very nicely why I’d fucked her husband, and it all fell apart. Then I wanted everything I had given him back. I wanted to deep-clean his old apartment and vacuum his bed and his clothes and his skin until every piece of me was extricated. I wanted oblivion. I wanted to be bald. But I couldn’t remove myself from him any more than I could remove him from me, or else I would’ve — would’ve done it with a boar brush and a scalpel.

Instead I remember everything.

Hair was originally published in The Yale Herald on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.