Terence Winch
Witch

Dominique is my barber.
She dreams she is a witch.
“It scares me,” she says.
“I look like a witch.
People stop me on the street
and ask if I’m a witch.
It must be my hair.”
She fingers her witch-like hair.

She lets them know
she is no witch.
“I don’t like the occult,”
she says. “Me neither,”
I tell her. “I believe
in a spiritual dimension,”
I say and she looks at me funny
as though she thinks I really
am into the occult. “Like full
moons,” I say, “that kind of thing.”
“Oh, full moons,” she says, reassured.
“I go crazy in the full moons.”

She shows me a note
from a customer whose hair
she cut the other day.
The customer is a composer
and invites Dominique to a performance
of his work. It’s a dumb note.
He condescends to her, telling how
his works (which he says invoke
France, her homeland) may bring
a tear to her eye. We both laugh.
I tell her I attract crazy people
and just got some fan mail
from a crazy person.

“You look like the actor who played
Jesus in that Zefferelli movie
that was on t.v.” she says.
“Yeah, people have told me that.”
“I discovered what made him so strange,”
she says. “What?” I ask.
“He never blinked.”

“So maybe I should blink a lot,
keep the crazies away,” I say.

“Yes. Blink all the time.”

return to SHAMPOO 7