Someone Else's Hair #5/30
pulls it straight and whispers if only…
Somewhere in spacetime a similar face
on the other side of the mirror twists a silken straight lock
around an index finger again
in the hopes that this time it might just learn
to helix itself across the shoulder rather than lying flat
The Blondes and brunettes eye each other jealously
collectively spending 30 million dollars on dye each year
while the middle aged men in sports cars delude themselves
into thinking no one will notice their hair plugs
No number of strokes with a brush
or twists of a curler will ever match
the glamor of Rapunzel
the color of Goldilocks
always too long or too short
too tangly or too fine
forever searching for just right
Those who have grown it long wonder what it would be like to cut it
while those recently shorn can not wait for it to grow out
Eventually the rest of us will stop growing
but our hair continues unabated
culture shifting expectations
cut and style
symmetrical, asymmetrical
bangs or none
product or nothing in it
Some changing their appearance monthly
others devout to the ideal of their senior picture
even decades later
Those with not enough chest hair wish to grow some
Those with back hair wish it gone
Every stray mole sprouts its own unwanted garden of weeds
We pluck and wax and obsess over eyebrows
Innocuous nothings the bane of existence
magnified in a curved mirror
reality distorted
becomes the new certainty
our deepest insecurity
our most desperate wish
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