The chair remembers more than you do

I just finished a cut for a woman who’s been coming in every six weeks for eight years. She didn’t say much, but when she stood up, her shoulders dropped like they’d been carrying something all that time. I watched her walk out and thought: this chair has heard every version of her—angry, tired, hopeful, quiet. It doesn’t speak, but it knows. Sometimes I wonder if the real work isn’t in the hair, but in the space between the scissors and the silence.