July 20, 2021

Pixie Cut

~ for my daughter


 Black-eyed, black-haired girl of thirty-two,

 I can see you reflected in a mirror

 across the room—one of many mirrors and multiple stylists

 with tattooed limbs and hennaed heads, clipping

 and snipping. And I am thinking that the cloth draped

 around your body, catching the sheared locks that tumble

 to your shoulders, your lap, the floor, seems as sacred

 as white linen on an altar table—your face emerging

 like an angel sculpted from the clay

 of your long, dark hair. You are smiling

 because you see at last, what we all have seen—

 how beautiful you are, that the woman you imagined

 has arrived—

 and she is and always has been, you.

 Terri Kirby Erickson, Broad River Review Vol. 47 (2015)

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