by Patrick Siniscalchi

I should have removed them, but they are all I have left of you. What harm would there be in holding on to those strands of your wavy, jet-black hair that deliciously framed your blue-gray eyes? That combination melted me straight away and so severely that at the end of our ten months together, I was still not fully formed. I spotted them weblike in the shower drain the morning following your exasperated exit—after drinking myself to sleep only to wake for good, two hours later. The ghost of your coconut scented shampoo on your pillow triggered a host of memories until dawn crept through the blinds.

The wise course of action would have been to grab a few sheets of toilet paper and pluck them out. But as pointed out during our last fight, I was never your intellectual equal, only your “hapless romantic”—your not-so-endearing term for me, often followed by a dubious chuckle.

Before turning on the water each day since being jettisoned, I stare at the sprouting mass woven into the metal lattice of the drain. A lack of fortitude prevents me from extracting your remains and scouring the shower, even though offshoots branch out, deliberate and sloth-like, toward my feet.

Thirty days into my withdrawal, a few hairs hiss and flick at my ankles like serpents’ tongues while showering. I bolt before they strike and rinse out the shampoo in the sink.

The strands grow longer; my showers get shorter. With cleanliness unattainable, a layer of grime suffocates my pores. Sometime during the sixth month, I enter the shower, crank the valves full blast, but abandon the cleansing. I position my nakedness over the drain, allowing a dark vine to creep over my body. The tendrils burrow taproots into my skin. After enveloping me, they constrict and drag me down.

Photo by Landiva Weber via Pexels