My family has a miscellany of hair, yet we complement each other perfectly.

Papi has short hair like a dark chocolate shrub. His beard is kept short and is rough like sandpaper, contrasting with his lively outgoing self and he has a bit hanging below his lip that he occasionally twirls around his finger.

Mama has long soft hair that is kept formally straight and tidy as a ruler for outings and work but can revert to its wild self at home.

My older sister has the hair of a firebrand that never seems to stay in order. It’s kept a jungle of curls, curlicues decorating the edges.

My little sister, the youngest, has “long long” hair. “Long long” hair, as soft as the down of a chick. “Long long” hair, dark like her nightly chocolate milk. “Long Long” hair, perfumed with aromas of pizza and hair oil. “Long long” hair, untamed and wild as a lion cub. “Long Long” hair, in braids, pigtails, pony, and puff. “Long long” hair, like a princess— the regime of our apartment, like the mermaid who had long since found her voice. Just barely reaches below the shoulder, and has yet to get her first haircut. “Long long” hair, she says. “Long long” hair, like the “big kid” she is.

A violinist

lightly strokes the sheep gut with --


tightly stretched horsehair.

I always went for the natural look
till it dread itself with dread

I put some conditioner
and lathered its sorrows away

Little did I know
that I was manipulated into thinking
my natural was natural...

Till I dried it off
and saw a lighter curlier ...natural

I open my window and toss my hair to the trees.
Someone told me birds use hair to insulate their nests.
Google says it’s harmful, but the birds and I have an understanding:
they won’t be strangled, and I won’t be stranded.

All I do is shed;
flesh hangs off bones like someone else’s dress,
I put on jewelry then take it off, hoping the fool’s gold won’t crumble
in my wallet. I’m sure I’ll self-immolate
if earring-backs and claw-clasps
keep licking my skin.
I shed hair and thighs,
guilt and fingernails, doubt and light,
until the world is full of me and I am full of nothing.

I gather my hair from brushes and shower drains,
pluck it from elastics and carpets, slice it out of vacuum rollers
with a box cutter, roll it into a tumbleweed in my palms.
Then to the window, where I drop it onto crabapple branches below.
I want the robins and starlings and sparrows,
the heaven-sent cardinals,
the crows I tell my secrets to,
to build a nest with my dead parts,
to make a home from the parts of me that couldn’t hold on.

Midsummer,
the worn-out end of June brushes against the beginning
of July and I’m wearing shorts to work for the first time in years.
I’m reading fiction in the sun, writing down my horoscope,
pretending I’m not a hostage to that first week in April
where he hurt my feelings, and I just hurt.

All I do is patter;
my hair drips to the floor in long, black rivers,
my aura drips down my back like a gas leak,
I think about how many trees I cut down to make myself,
and I think about birds falling asleep
in a haunt that’s made of me.

Losing my hair, losing my patience—
legs thinning, heartbeat skipping,
eyes squinting like commas, mouth tensing like a fist,
fingers like pitchforks reaching up from the grave,
skin like an avocado rotting on the counter.
All this losing, at least I’m helping the birds.

Words come and go with no consequence,
I buy dumb **** online and write poems without any soul,
I imagine a life where love is a faucet that drips through the night,
and I dream of him with long hair and daisies in his teeth.
My writing doesn’t pinch, my feet don’t tingle,
I just knot phrases around each other like tangled string lights
with half the bulbs burnt out, and it’s fine to say things like that.

I’m on a losing streak, but the birds don’t know it,
they tend to their babies, they sing to the dawn.
I can shed my way across summer like that was always the plan,
like I wasn’t born to ache, to be left gutted and graceless and wondering.
I wasn’t made to be love-bombed or pulled into trench warfare
after being invited to a picnic. I didn’t want to hold the gun,
but he was screaming to pull the trigger, and then my skirt was ruined.

I can leave my body in the grass and my hair in the trees,
I can write dry poems and feed them to the wind,
I can leave a trail of me through the trees like I was never there,
and when I find my way back, only the birds will know the difference.

It's been a month since I've cut my hair short
And in another month, I'll cut it again,
and the next month, another inch,
and more inch, and more inch...
As it tries to grow longer, I'll stop it there.
I'll chop it, if it tries to go past my shoulder.
And by December, I'll have a hair and body you have never touched, ever.
And by January, I'll be a brand new person
yet someone you'll never forget forever.

a tear dropped
from the face of despair
and wove it’s way down
it’s entangled hair
weaving through waves
of dry dead strands
it untangled the knots
the braids and the bands
sliding ever so slowly
soothing out like oil
every curve and curl
of every anxious coil
straightening the stress
as it falls to the ground
shaking your head off the mess
let your hair hang down