cowlicks vs dog tails
I greet my cowlick in the morning, combing through the follicles like how a boat parts the sea. As soon as I release the comb, the left pieces of my hair flop back to the right side of my face. I just want a middle part, but it’s no worry. A little gel and some hairspray will do the trick of holding the desired symmetry into place (for now, at least). Soon enough, the hair will return to where it started.
Lately, I’ve been homesick. Or nostalgic. Or lost. No matter how many times I try to brush over whatever this feeling is, it shows back up. Like my cowlick, memories of home are stubborn and persistent, and they welcome me when I wake. Happily 2,250 miles away from Nevada, yet I ask myself: How can I dislike it and miss it at the same time? The mountains and the wiry sagebrush. The tall sky and the hot, winter sun. Crisp lake water. Goat heads. My dry, sunburned skin and my bleach blonde hair.
I don’t remember most of my school field trips in great detail, mainly because they had to do with silver mining and railroads—topics I had little interest in. I’ve always preferred stories over science and math. Tell me about the ghost that haunted Virginia City, and my attention is yours. However, one field trip stands out in particular. It took place at a historical center near Pyramid Lake, home of the Indigenous Paiute tribe. After a fishing demonstration and lesson on the history of basket weaving, we sat down for a folklore retelling—first spoken in Paiute, and then translated to English—of why dogs sniff each other’s butts (now, imagine the sound of 30-some giggling children filling the room).
In short, the legend goes that every dog’s tail is not its own but another’s. So when two dogs meet for the first time, they immediately sniff each other’s tail in an attempt to find that missing piece of themselves—a lost part of their identity.
It’s silly, but it stuck with me. I chased this idea of finding my missing piece, literally. I moved to Oregon, then Philadelphia. I searched for it on the streets of New York and the canals of Amsterdam. And yet, the feeling of being lost always followed me. Nevada is a part of the great basin—a landscape marked for its endorheic quality—meaning that there is no outflow for the water, no drainage to the ocean. I’ve always wondered if the reason people stay, why Nevadans rarely leave, is because they can’t find their own outflow.
So I ask myself. Is the idea of home like my cowlick? A part of me, no matter what? Or is the idea of home like my dog tail? Somewhere else—something I’ll always search for but never find. Maybe it’s neither. Maybe it’s both. All I know is that I desire it. To feel like I belong.
It started in the wild, wild west
under tangerine skies.
It went from nothing, then the rest:
enough to make the desert cry.
When the mountain caught fire,
filling the sky with dust,
it all went haywire
(between the anger and the lust).
She prayed for the mild, mild west:
that the winds would still,
like if the heat would rest
and the lake would fill.
If the sun hung low,
the blacktop cooled,
no crickets mowed,
or roosters cooed.
If the horses stalled
and the snakes unrattled.
If the sheep curled up
asleep with the cattle…
maybe then, she would stay,
rub a lil dirt on it,
go on with her day:
hike up a hill
and have no trouble breathing,
join a finch in it’s
melody—singing
songs from school
when she was young and small,
when the world felt big
and her dreams felt tall,
when hope wasn’t a ceiling fan
filled with dust:
a placebo, a placeholder,
when there was still so much trust
toward nature and people,
that thing with the steeple.
Toward emotions and thoughts,
and machines with the slots.
Trust of coaches and teachers
and big-bellied preachers,
of family and friends—
that good things don’t end.
But of course, it’s never like that.
One day you’re flying.
The next day, you splat
like a fly and it’s catcher,
your curled-shoulder stature.
So, of course, she runs,
she runs far away
just to find that all of it stays
in her brain, in her heart,
in her bloodstream, too—
like the space between stretch marks
was made just for you—
You! This feeling without a name.
This buzzing, this quarreling,
this mind-bending game.
Will it grow, will it slow,
this calling of home?
It follows her no matter how far she roams.
But she’s cut ties, said goodbyes,
brushed out the knots with the comb.
When everything’s changed,
can she still come back?
Will it feel estranged?
If she returns to that place
where the sky’s so blue,
she hopes the desert will forgive her
and that one girl, too.