For My Wife Cutting My Hair

You move around me expertly like the good, round Italian barber I went to in Florence, years before we met, his scissors a razor he sharpened on a belt. But at first when you were learning, I feared for my neck, saw my ears like sliced fruit on the newspapered floor. Taking us back in time, you cleverly clipped my head in a flat-top. The years in between were styles no one had ever seen, or should see again: when the wind rose half my hair floated off in feathers, the other half bristling, brief as a brush. In the chair, almost asleep, I hear the bright scissors dancing. Hear you hum, full-breasted as Aida, carefully trimming the white from my temples, so no one, not even I, will know.