Straight hair make me look more beautiful and less myself
Exactly what I thought I wanted.
Now I look at the girl in front of me and I wonder how she has changed
she writes down same stories of tragic hopes, as I do
her heart, like mine, beats in a tentative rhythm, confused by the tides of sentimental emotions that seem so vacant
she too gets tired of playing the pawn, she too drags the still of her being down the road of survival
she too struggles to love me
How, I've loved her and hated her for a young longevity
yet something in her is dimmer than the skinny, short girl that used to make faces at me
something about her sleek hair is less beautiful than the Hornet's nest on the tiny girl's head
Something in the valley of her lips, some glimmer in her eyes;
as if forcefully electrified. The little girl's eyes glimmered like a moon's,
mother once said the sun of her soul illuminated the black of her eyes.
I wonder what she'd say now.
But I am well acquainted with the source of the absence, and my partner is too.
We know too well. We know too well when we let go of our pearly little courage.
We know too well that as our eyes lingered at the boxes of hair-straighteners down the aisle, our courage felt a threat arriving.
But we were still young then, still little suns, so we let our mothers hold our hands and walk us out of the seducing store.
We know too well how our courage weakened when we envied our friends' mighty strands, straight and still like dead snakes hanging.
So as our polished fingers gripped on to the box, years later, our courage grew afar but then, we had decided not to notice.
I see her now.
She's right there, the little girl.
Behind me, behind my image
she speaks like a vivid memory, I smell sunshine blooming around her uncombed curls. Her spotted skin is clearer than our nails will ever be. The light of her lashes flutter more than our strands.
There she stands, no paint, no cloud.
She looks like a naked sun.
She tells us to wash our hair back to bushes; to enliven our faces, let powdered streams run down our necks. She doesn't mention our claws but more than once do we catch her staring. Says if she could pluck those dried petals out our lashes, she would.
Says if she could burn that hair-iron down to embers, she sure would.
Says if she could come out and hug us both till we loved each other once more, she would.
We stare at our sketched smiles, glossy valleys as if blood aching to drip. The nails that could clench at a soul and pull it out. Eye-lids weighed down by lashes, skin tired out by icing.
For a moment we let the hopeful silence swirl around us.
For a while, lost in battle of deciding between girl's eyes' shine or our crystal gloss, we still.
But it's too much.
Too hard to give it all up.
To wash away the mask, we'd have to peel off the skin. Bringing the hair back to life would be the death of us.
Too much, too hard, to quick, maybe later, just last time, step by step, some day, not now, too much..
Then we go back to burning our hair to numbness, dabbing dusts on
our shameful faces.
We're great painters.
We know that because when the little girl silently walks away, out of our reach, out of our eyes; when we are left on our own
we hardly recognise the artefacts we have created.
November, 2019