Ode to My Hair

Exotic, “omg so thick,” a rug, so to speak—

black cortex, I can almost be beautiful

with you. Once, mother snatched

my split ends like newly acquired money

and named them Taliban Beard.

I never wanted this much of anything,

so I scissored you at the scrunchy

and sold you all to the World Wide Web.

In plastic bags, you were shipped

next to different manes, the past

stored in your filaments like fetuses

in formaldehyde, fragrances distending

as if skin of people huddled

into the eyeless belly of a boat at night.

Cut and alone, dark keratin lies cold

in factory halls: congregation of wait,

you’re patient until you too are wanted.

But when my spools stop, and the silence holds—

let them braid you into other heads.

Let them brush you for my funeral.

Let those of you spared on hospital tiles,

picked from lovers’ teeth, and nestled deep

in the vacuum, or shampooed

between dirt and debris in drains, light up.

May you glow with the weight of love

you can only share with what pries

out of yourself. Those stuck to balloons,

left in brushes, escapees taken away to elsewhere—

what is to be said of you? I won’t be gone

until you are. Heavy root

that rots to bloom when I shrink—

stay and conquer the sargasso in my tomb.