“Es un amor muerto,” the hairdresser trills with a coquettish laugh as she holds up a silver strand of my hair. A dead passion. In the harsh glare of the salon’s lights, the gray hair is almost invisible. When I remain silent, she shrugs wordlessly and continues with my hair cut. But she does not remove the gray hair.

Days later, I remembered the gray hair on the way home from work. I am driving in the rain, windshield wipers dancing back and forth in their lazy waltz. My hands suddenly desperate to pluck it out. Where is it? As if I could pluck the memory of that dead passion out. So young, too young to have a gray hair. Old enough to know of love, but not to possess only dead passions. Not yet.

I decided to leave the gray hair alone. Not because I have chosen to “grow old gracefully” (whatever that means), but because to pluck it out would mean to pluck a passion out of my life. Dead or otherwise.