22 Locks of Hair

Inside their part of their wardrobe they shared with their papa, Gianni kept an old tobacco tin. Inside that tin was a piece of paper that was folded in a number of ways. One had to be careful in the way that one unfolded it, but if unfolded a certain way, it would reveal the blonde locks of hair of the girls that Gianni had romanced. If unfolded another way, then the locks of his dark haired sweethearts was unearthed. If folded another, the in-betweens were revealed, the ones that he could have called either way, blonde or brown, whether they were straight or curled, smooth or a little frizzy. Gianni had secured his first lock at the age of five. Now he was sixteen, he held the tin smugly in both hands, for it was hard these days to keep it closed if he didn't tie rope around it and knot that rope securely. In all, he had 22 locks of hair.


Since the age of six, Alessandro had his own tin. It wasn't rusty at the hinges like Gianni's tin because whenever Alessandro had a moment, he took the tin out and rubbed a worn sock around its oblong perimeter, as well as its face and its underside, which would not shine up in the way that the face did, even when the soft worn cotton went over it.

On the eve of his ninth birthday, Alessandro too shoved his hand into the wardrobe and pulled out his tobacco tin. Bringing it closer in, he cradled in his hand.

Inside was a length of paper folded up in the same way that Gianni's lockkeeper was. Alessandro unfolded the paper until it was flat. Since he had never loved a girl, there wasn't a lock to be had, but Alessandro looked anyway, for he was about to go from being eight to nine years old and if he couldn't create anything perhaps something would appear on the paper to tell him what to do. Now it was just a piece of paper with folds in it. There was a rush inside of him and he held back all the stuff that had gathered in his heart. He folded the paper up quickly. Tell me.

About romance?
What love is.

With that, Gianni told of the many places love could show itself, beginning with the groin because that's where, he said, everything began. There was a flickering that lifted up from the groin to the stomach. Butterflies in the stomach sometimes turned into wasps. Stars could shoot up, from the stomach to the heart. There could be a thump in the heart or a tingling there, or a burst from the heart to the throat. The heart could stop. Breath held short. One could become faint or dizzy. All the while, Gianni kept one hand over his bursting folds of paper, the other hiding as it pushed the folds back to make his package as small as it could be.

Diane S