The ends of my hair
have seen so many memories.
They have blown in the wind
while standing on top of a vast, beautiful mountain in Argentina.
They have have laid on friends’ shoulders
as I cried into the fabric of their shirts.
They have bounced in a ponytail, side to side,
as I hiked across Spain for five hundred miles.
The ends of my hair hold so many of my precious memories –
beautiful moments that I so badly wish to relive again.
Moments that I sometimes cling to
and sometimes feel guilty that my life is no longer similar to.
Sometimes I cling to certain past moments of my life
that seemed “better” than today.
either because life seemed less complicated back in the day,
I had less to fear,
or I felt more in touch with my soul.
Oh, how hard it is to remember
that those beautiful moments that I so badly wish I could go back to,
that I still desperately try to cling to,
still exist within my hair
every moment
of every day.
And even when I eventually
chop the ends of my hair off,
those memories, my past selves,
will still exist in my gut,
in my bones,
in my heart.
Even after I have been dead for fifty years,
and my body will have been decomposed into the Earth,
so will all those beautiful memories.
They will be the dust within the wind
that becomes someone else’s memory.
Our memories, our selves, never leave us.
We never have to cling to anything
because everything we’ve ever had
will always live within us.
Oh how funny it is to be wishing so badly for something to come back to you
when it has never left you
and still bounces
everyday
right next to my ears.
Ali Walks Around 