Tangles

Tangled hair, tangled ideas, a tangled road leading me home.
My fingers pick apart the strands, pulling and ripping and cajoling them into separate entities with bruised and swirled tips.
I pick through opportunities and duties, dreams and obligations.
Here is a matted nest of possibilities.

The strands are dry and brittle in my grasp.
I am careful with my touch but not enough- many break or pull away from their rooted home: seven years in my hand.
A knitted ball of events and memories.
Sun and salt and dirt and love clinging to each cell.

It gets easier as I reach further in; only the ends are rough and wound together.
Where is the beginning and where is the end?
Do I need to cut off the oldest for the rest to survive (thrive)?
Or is it all about the care. About nourishing the oldest parts of me and letting the newest fend for themselves?
But it is inevitable that they will break, fall to the earth, disintegrate into dust. Cellular memory gone (poof!).

I smooth the whole of them, my scalp sore from the pulling, the thinking, the loss.
I snuggle them together in a braid of gold and brown and gray, my remaining physical journal spilling down my back.
The strands hide their kinks and knots behind each other, woven into beauty and order.
They (I) swing in cradled waves in the salty evening air remembering deep inside the tangles and unraveling that has led me here.