Sarah A. Chavez
All the friendly women
in the office
go to the same salon: the same shears
and spray, the same dye, and chatter. I
could nothing in that experience take joy
—always slightly critical of the scissor angle,
the amount of hair scattered like leaves
at the trunk of the elevated chair. And the price!
How could the price be justified??
Some stylists with seemingly so little training,
the same technique employed as used in
the online instructional video watched yesterday.
But they are all so happy! The women
with their balayages, and blonde highlights,
with their pixies, and symmetry. The hair artist too,
so in love with the women chatting about children,
about the pain of menstruation, about proper care
for one’s eyelashes, for their pores. About how
difficult and noble it is to be woman. How men
don’t understand.—I do not understand
the draw in these subjects, cannot (will not?) abide
salon nature, Lady Nature. These breasts belie
belonging. My heart pumps a shapeless red.
So I hide in the harsh light of the my own bathroom,
fallacious scissors, crude cuts, and box dye. Preferring
the lie of myself as having hair artist talent, to the lie
implicit under the plastic sheet in the chair.
Fresno Writers dot com 