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Hairbrush

Amanda Hadlock

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I cleaned out my hairbrush and realized my ex-girlfriend’s hair was stuck in it. I pulled
the clumps out and tossed them off my apartment balcony, watched them float down to the dirt. Then I boiled the brush to get any last trace of her out.

I sulked about the time we’d wasted together, the gifts I’d given her, like the purse with
the Boston terrier painted on, because she had one, a spotted one with a round, pink belly and a smushed snout that reminded me more of a piglet than anything canine. I loved that dog.

I remembered the nights we’d stay out until bar close snorting lines, then crash into a
death-like sleep, tangled up together on her living room rug that smelled like dirty dogs, how I
was dying to be loved. A baggie procured from her bra, bathroom sinks and a bumper sticker on the mirror that read “Customers must stop crying before returning to the bar.” We’d laugh at that and wipe our noses before heading back for shots of well whisky with pickle juice chasers, and another, and another.

My pot was boiling over on the stovetop, hissing like a witch’s cauldron. I moved it off
the hot burner and yelped when steamy water sloshed over the rim and across my fingers. I
turned the tap on cold and stuck my hand in, stared at my angry red skin. All this for a cheap
plastic hairbrush.

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Amanda Hadlock holds an MFA in creative writing from Florida State University, where she also served as Assistant Editor for Southeast Review. She is originally from Missouri. She received her MA in English from Missouri State University, where she also worked as the Graduate Assistant for Moon City Review. Her fiction, nonfiction, and graphic narrative work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as The Florida Review, Fractured Literary, WFSU/NPR’s All Things Considered, Essay Daily, Hobart, Wigleaf,New Limestone Review, Past Ten, The Lindenwood Review, Esthetic Apostle, and others. Her debut fiction collection, Missouri Slurry, will be out in February 2028 with Cornerstone Press.

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