Stepping into the shower,
I find some of my loved one’s hair
curled on the drain screen.
How often that unintended memento
annoyed me: how my loved one
always forgot to pick out, after showering,
that shed relic of mortality.
A wad of hair, I regarded it then.
Now, my loved one gone aboard a plane
into the thin air of the sky,
I regard it a lock of hair,
and I realize if my loved one never returned
I would fish that lock of hair
out of the wastebasket
and sleep with it under my pillow
the rest of my life.