This year on my birthday I broke Autumn’s ceramic garden and I cried. I stood looking at it.The

tree in the middle was bashed in. The pale pieces of the flowers' innards were strewn about the

carpet, buried in its scalp. I didn’t want to go into our bedroom and break it to her. Matt held my

face together and wiped my cheek.

I’ve been cutting my own hair for the past five years now. Severing the life that grows from your

head can be rejuvenating, and no professional does it how I like. Matt prefers when I keep it

behind my ears, away from my face. When I’m tucked back like that my spots are more

noticeable. My skin is chipped with redness below my lips and at the edges of my cheeks. I rub

prescription glue into them twice a day—in the morning and at night with the company of a pill.

I can feel the concentration of deeper cracks waiting, gathering, under my skin if I press my

tongue against the inside flesh of my mouth, past my teeth.

My mother cuts bangs every six years because my dad likes the way they frame her. She can

stand trimming the lines of stunted growth around her forehead for about two months. After that

short while, the splinters that hang and prick her face become too annoying and she lets them

run. She gets irritated when I leave the pieces of myself on the ground, around the cold, ceramic

rim of the sink, and clumped at the drain. I swear I do my best to pick up my life before leaving

the bathroom, but there’s always a strand or two to find.

I bowed my head and walked into our dark room through the long, black beaded curtain rooted

and dripping from the gray doorway’s pate. Autumn said she could fix it—glue the dead

fragments back together. It will live again, don’t worry. The splintered mockery of a tree and the

tattered greenery around it has been piled up on top of itself, sitting at our living room table for

the past twenty seven days now, irreparable.

It’s due for its rejuvenation and so am I. My life has been getting into my eyes; I need a trim, I

am going to break.