the old lady's head

     There’s an old lady across the street who hangs her head out the window like a two hundred year old Rapunzel. I can see her from my window. She’s there every day, all day long. She’s got hair, all this long gray stuff hanging down from her head, sparkling miles of silk. It makes me sick. I’d like to sock her in the eye.
     What’s she doing? I don’t get it. What’s she up to over there? It’s always the same; she wears a big old lady grin right between those two pillars of hair. They run almost to the street. How old can that hair be? It’s not right. She’s putting it out the window purposefully. I think she knows I’m watching.
     I’m pretty sure she’s teasing me.
     I’m looking at her now as I write this; she’s less than thirty feet away. There. Head, hair, face stuck in the middle, a bit of neck, just a bit, and then the window sill: A perfectly framed portrait of a smug hair-head.
     That’s what it’s like day after day - head, hair, neck. To tell you the truth I’ve never seen any more of her. Just the head, the hair, the neck. Never seen her on the street or walking around; I’m beginning to think that maybe that’s what’s going on over there – there’s nothing more to her.
     She’s got lopped off body parts.
     Lopped off body.
     There’s nothing there but the head. I wrote it and now I’m convinced.
     Too bad for her, no body - but man oh man, what a bunch of hair. It must be at least three or four feet long. Think about it! What a rotten thing, all that hair and no damned body to walk it around.
     She’s missing quite a few teeth too. It’s a smile, sure, but I’ll say I wouldn’t like to smile with all those teeth missing.
     Missing teeth and missing body parts… Whew! That’s rough.
     She must be planted there, like a daisy - an old toothless long haired daisy. Oof! Neck stuck in a clay pot, three inches of soil, water.., push her up against the window for light.
I’ll tell you what, it could be worse than that – some old dry dirt, a plastic pot, some bugs in there - Aphids.
     Damned hair…
     Not a little cross-eyed too, if I’m seeing right. Bad complexion. Ah, what do you expect for two hundred years, just a head - no body?
     Nope. I wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t give up the rest just for the hair. I’m confident about that decision. If someone said to me, “Hey, I’ll give you some…” Nope. I’d have to say it.
     What if she got an itch? What’s she going to do about it? What if someone decides to yank her out the window, pot and all? Into the street!? There’s no recourse.
     And what if, just what if some lunatic gets tired of seeing all that hair, silver gray loveliness and figures on putting a stop to it? With a pair of shears! A big pair of hair shears! What then?
     What then?