Imani Smith

Haircut

It took less time to lose than it did to grow

I heard the whirr of the razor, and knew I was home

Clumps fell, like soap suds

The hairdresser’s hands washing away the length

Smaller

Smaller

Smaller

I’d always had long hair

That’s what they say

Because they believe they know me better than myself:

I passed through her

when I was born

Memory

beginning at the point

where our bodies separated

I was brought from familiar dark

A sterile hand severed the cord, and I cried to be reattached

Things are different now.

Her judgment is that same knife

Her mind is a blank, ever-expanding wall

My teary eyes can’t deceive her.

This is a part of growing up.

The emotional window seat is no longer enough:

A golden sky. We were going faster than the speed limit.

His words came like lightning,

tearing through an early summer shower.

(The South had forgotten the sound of thunder.)

I didn’t pass through him,

but he was involved in the holding.

A comforting arm supporting the head,

after being removed from my first home.

He watched as the bones in my fingers stretched and popped,

as my legs sprouted from my torso

like those flowers people grow in old boots.

Like how some puddles spread into streams.

He watched as my hair fluffed into a loud,

round-ish shape.

No words can describe the love.

Things are different now.

I was too young to understand ownership.

The world I saw was always in my grasp.

He tries to teach me what I reach for is unreachable.

He tries to teach me not to reach.

He’s tried to show me how feeling is falling.

I never listen, though. I’m terrible at retention.

The sky was gold when he said,

“I raised you”

The unsaid “so I own you” still rang louder

The sunset came to burn away the wound

But injured me deeper

It gave me the light

To see the look in his eyes

This is the hardest part of growing up.

Seventeen years of curls

surrounded my whispering mind

All of the shouts that never shouted,

feelings I was taught not to feel,

memories locked in      their     cage.

Now falling down

like soap suds

Bubbling and pooling

A River of Afro

The most African picture

When it was done

and setting under the dryer,

I watched as the hairdresser’s daughter

Struggled to sweep up my nostalgia

I learned that my hair was once my armor

And even when severed from its purpose

It still fights to survive