"Who did your hair" by PQHAÜS

Acrylic on canvas / 24x24 inch / 2026 / PQHAÜS

In fourth grade, after summer break, Phoebe came back to school without her mother. I didn't understand grief, so I mistook distance for kindness. My friends and I orbited around her, always close enough to notice, never close enough to speak. She began wearing the same clothes every day. The braid she used to wear so neatly slowly unraveled into something nobody seemed to fix. She stopped talking. She stopped dancing. She stopped asking us to eat lunch with her. We watched her disappear a little more each day, believing we were protecting her, when in reality we were only protecting ourselves from a sadness we were too young to carry.

I still remember her father always running late to pick her up. My mom was always late too, so I was always the last one standing beside her at the pickup zone. I watched him from across the parking lot. A tall man in a wrinkled suit, shirt untucked, crooked glasses hanging unevenly on his face as if he'd put them on without looking. On his back was Phoebe's younger sister, crying every afternoon. He never once asked her to stop. I always smiled at Phoebe before she got into the car. She never smiled back. She quietly climbed into the old wagon while her father smiled for both of them.

Now I have a friend who is Phoebe's dad.

Every time he talks about his fears, I hear the words Phoebe's father never had the luxury of saying. I imagine the mornings after her mother died. A kitchen that suddenly sounded too quiet. Two lunchboxes to pack. Tiny socks to match. Hair ties scattered across the bathroom counter while he stood in front of the mirror, trying to braid a little girl's hair with hands that had never learned how. I wonder how many mornings he stood there a little too long before admitting defeat. I wonder if Phoebe noticed that the braid disappeared little by little, or if she only saw her father trying his best with hands that had suddenly been asked to do everything.

I often wonder where they are now.

I feel guilty toward my friend because whenever he speaks, my mind quietly leaves him. It always walks back to that blazing August afternoon. Phoebe's faded ladybug T-shirt. Her little lunchbox swinging against her knees. The messy bun that had quietly replaced the braid. The old wagon waiting at the curb. Her little sister crying on her father's back. Sometimes I think I remember them more vividly now than I ever did when they were standing right in front of me.

Sometimes I think the saddest part wasn't what happened to Phoebe.

It was that she disappeared while the rest of us watched. We thought silence was compassion. We thought leaving her alone was kindness. We didn't know that grief isn't something you give people space from. It's something you sit beside. Every day we said nothing, we quietly taught her how to carry the unbearable by herself.

I still think about her sometimes.

I hope someone braided her hair again.