Shampoo wends from my hair
riding rivulets down my face
and stinging my eyes.
The humid air is awash with
the smell of
coconut...
which I do not like.
But then again,
it’s not my shampoo.
When I moved back in with my parents and my
younger brother (aged 30)
I found the shower we once shared awash in
bottles.
His wife (forever 24) was one of those women who had
a bottle for everything.
Dry hair, frizzy hair, oily hair, big hair.
No hair.
A corpse doesn’t need conditioner and
After she took her life
she left her shampoo and now two years later
after moving back in with my parents
I wonder whether my brother ever moved on.
Does he shower with her ghost?
I do, when I use her shampoo
and it runs down my face and stings my eyes and smells like coconut.
Instead of talking to him I slowly attempt
to use up her memory,
so that he and I are no longer awash in it
whenever we shower
and we can move forward.
But then,
inevitably,
as the shampoo runs thin
and my eyes are rinsed clean
I wonder:
If he followed her into the dark,
how long would I keep his bottles
as daily I tried to clean myself
while simultaneously
awash in their ghosts?