“I’m a writer and data engineer with a passion for analysis. I love numbers and words. I consider writing a form of life analysis. When a life is plotted to paper, what patterns emerge, and what insights do those patterns reveal?”
Erik Moyer is a teaching fellow and doctoral candidate in creative writing at the University of North Texas. He holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and a BS from the University of Virginia. His work appears in Arts & Letters, Epiphany Magazine, Oxford Poetry, Passages North, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Outside of school, he’s spent the past decade working as a data engineer. He can be found at erikjosephmoyer.com.
Behind the Cue Ball
No one ever tells you you’re going bald.
That’s something you have to learn
for yourself. Others will spot it well
before you do. As with many afflictions,
it’s easier to diagnose than self-diagnose.
Still, everyone is too polite to ever say it
to your face. So you won’t know
until it’s already too late.
You may become stressed.
And in your frenzied research, learn how stress
contributes to hair loss. This may stress
you out further. So you visit your primary.
He goes, You know, this prescription
won’t last forever. To which you reply,
It just needs to last long enough
for me to trick a woman into loving me
and having my terminally bald babies.
You may be tempted to skin your head
and grow your lack of a beard out.
Don’t. Let the wind chime
through your hollow locks.
Be presidential. Your father always said,
Worry about what you can control.
So you eat green. Stack plates
in the weight room. Rehearse
that funny story of the time
you hung ten on a great white.
You may find yourself better off
in the long run. You may fall off
before you get there. Instead,
you opt for a happy medium,
crying yourself to sleep at night
as you stroke your troll doll, panting,
It’s just your hair. It’s not your life.
~Erik Moyer
erik@erikjosephmoyer.com