A Something That is Barely a Something

by Jane Freiman

---

Our kitchen trashcan is full
of snippets of my hair. Little
shards in brown and blond.
You know how Victorian
women cut locks of their
hair and gave it to people
they loved? Well, in a way,
I am doing that too.
Except I am just giving it
to trash, to rot, to the
glitter and grace of crinkly
plastic against a wilted
scallion.

Here you go, a piece of me,
I say without saying
anything. A shred of my
extremity fluttering down
to encounter something
not quite living and not
yet dead. A something that
is barely a something.

---

Jane Freiman (she/her) is a writer, archives practitioner, and oral historian based in Boston, MA. Her work has been featured in the Brooklyn Rail, Syntax Magazine, The College Hill Independent, Documents d'Artistes Bretagne, and Chiron Review (forthcoming). She is currently the Oral History Project Assistant at BOMB Magazine and the Historical & Special Collections Assistant at the Harvard Law School Library.

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