Griffin Daniel Somaratne

The Barbers

On the patio behind my house, we cut each other’s hair.
The clippers quiver in your hand as you cut the sides, 
and my hair falls like wool onto the concrete. 
You are quiet behind me. The kitchen windows are open 
and my parents bicker about a missing plate. Somewhere lower, 
a child fights with her sibling. I mistake the long dead grass
on the hill for shadows as it shudders in the wind. Now and then, 
the small scissors send black bits onto my thighs. We lose daylight. 
Without it, we grow cold in our tank tops, flinching from the water
you spray. When it is your turn, I wrap a towel around you. The hair 
on the back of your neck forms a V. I cut it. Even in the wind, 
it lands on the pile of mine and stays there.

Griffin Somaratne (pronounced Soh-muh-rot-nee) is a junior at Stanford studying Human Centered Design and Psychology. He is a designer, researcher, and sometimes writer, whose poetry and stories focus on queerness, place, and the trivial parts of the human experience.