[god I’m sorry this poem is so long but it’s based on an actual crisis I had recently and I wanted to talk about it somewhere]
8am, two pigtails, one pair of scissors.
Hand trembling, two decisive cuts,
One- admittedly- more even than the other.
There was no air in that bathroom,
only panic and tears and water.
Hair shoved down the toilet, in the bin, down the sink hole- forced down by the tap.
About 3 inches, 7.62 centimetres, gone.
Uneven, crisis fuelled, but personal.
Then, like any other day, I put my hair up
The end of my ponytail was messy.
No one noticed but me. I felt free.
My mother laughed when she noticed:
“You’ve done it, you’ll have to deal with it.”
My dads voice trembled when he heard:
“I’m not paying to fix it,” he decided
“You looked better with longer hair.”
I continued to feel free.
Weeks went by, the uneven ends
balanced with natural growth.
The same cycle I inevitably enter:
Long hair is annoying, cut it short,
I’m convinced to grow it out..
I piss everyone off by cutting it again:
Shaved side, short bob, long bob, bangs.
Short hair like grass blades waving in the wind.
Then long and wavy, like the angry ocean waves.
When my mum evened the sides,
The little chunks of hair covered the floor,
Were blown around from the draft of the kitchen door.
Her hands trembled with the scissors,
Unsteady with the comb, forcing more strands to fall from between the cracks.
Maybe it reminded her of when I was a kid
And fell from the playground, winding myself.
My hair was longer then, girly, clumsy.
She made her way around my head-
Gentle, nervous, constantly matching the strands up-
“It won’t look great, but it will grow.”
I only wanted it evened. I wanted short.
Stubborn hairs fell onto her white shirt-
And onto my arms, clinging to me,
Like a part of me was in there and didn’t
They tickled softly, kept in groups.
Forearm, chest, shoulders, legs.
When the task was done it looked professional.
It lost the bathroom mirror, crisis look.
A new me left the dining table chair.
“Go shake the hair off outside.”
My mother said. I followed. She hoovered the floor.
(The strands would stay in there for a while)
They caught the sun as they fell,
Looking golden in the afternoon glow.
A new me was growing with the new ends,
An old me was lost in the falling hair,
But we all fall sometimes:
The sun catches us, and the wind blows us away.
