Day 9 / Poem 9

Today's poem was a surprise - it was not the poem I started this morning, nor was it the poem I thought about while I took a break to wash dishes. But after I washed the dishes, I washed my hair in the sink.

Whenever I wash my hair in the sink, and end up staring at the ends watching the shampoo bubbles run out, I think about hair, and when my hair was longer, and that one girl in jr high who swore she'd never had a haircut and that the wispy ends of her hair were actually baby hair. What is it about that idea that makes it sound like hair from outer space, or hair that is actually a visitor from the past? I don't know. But her baby hair made me feel both jealous and oddly uncomfortable.

Needless to say, I was never the girl with baby hair. That's how it all started - all the girls I was not, the ones I was jealous of, the ones I felt bad for, the ones whose families scared me, and the ones whose lives were exotic to me.

Here's to those girls, all of them.