Hair, Lint, Something

A short story by Cyata Ntigurirwa
Staff Writer

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It’s hair, lint, something. It’s on my sweater and on my jacket. It’s in my hair; I keep pulling out strands. Yarn is strewn and weaved trickily. It’s tangled in my hair. I can’t escape it, and I don’t try. I don’t try. Somehow, even when I’m not wearing a scarf, it’s everywhere. It’s everywhere. It’s in my mouth, it’s in my eyes and in my nose. Yarn. Pulled, crocheted, and knitted into scarves. Sometimes hats. Otherwise, mittens. Might be mine, might be my friend’s…Yarn. But it’s everywhere. Falling in clots on the floor, dragging on my pants and skirts. It’s everywhere. But I need warmth. Be it a scarf or a hat—I need it! And the mittens! So do you. We all do—that yarn. 

But think about it. Where does it all go? All that yarn that falls on the floor…It wooshes in the traffic of our feet. It gets swept up by a broom. It gets put in a bin? 

That yarn. It finds its brothers and its sisters. It coagulates and forms something else. It forms something living and breathing from the strands of hair, lint, and miscellaneous mix of dust and other things. 

I haven’t seen it. Neither have you. All those pieces, all those bodies of yarn. The flurries of fuzzy bits of hair, lint and something. But, I know that they go. They escape the broom; they escape the bin. They form something else. Something living. 

More than a scarf, hat, glove. 

That yarn. We all need it. Where does it go?