They tell you that your hair will "thin."
They don't know when it will happen, but it will.
It doesn't for two weeks, and you think you're clear
you think you have time.
You think maybe you might finally be the exception.
Then it begins, slightly at first
a few extra strands in the hair catch.
You wake up and there is a carpet of hair
across your pillow, across the sheets
down your chest and back.
No one tells you how,
even though you thought yourself prepared,
when every move you make sends strands
pouring like fresh mowed grass off of your body--
and even if you don't, you feel each strand as it comes loose
with a little tingle, root giving away under the sagging tension,
and falls, spontaneously, like leaves on a still autumn morning,
brushing your skin, mocking you with gentle tickles,
like a fingernail drawn, barely touching you,
a reminder, as they shed without ceasing,
at your helplessness--
and when you finally do get up,
the gathered layer rustles off you as if you were Rip Van Winkle,
waking up from under 19 years of leaves--
You will hyperventilate.
You will not know if it is better to lay statuesque,
and hope that maybe there will be something left tomorrow,
or to rip it all out like plucking a chicken,
and pray it won't be patchy,
pray you won't be left with a few stubborn strands--
dry branches off a dead tree, hollow to the core.
When you finally are brave enough
to shower, the hair will cling between your fingers.
You will be stuck in this endless cycle of
rinsing your hair, and rinsing your hands.
It will be caught on your neck,
stick in the soap on your face, under your breasts,
cling to your legs, you bend to clean them,
what hair you have left falls into your eyes,
you push it back, stand up, look at your hand,
and there is hair between your fingers again.
No one told you that you will
walk the edge of hysteria trying to clean the tub,
after sobbing silently into the shower stream
until the hot water ran cold, and you gave up
on ever picking the stray strands off your body.
They didn't tell you, it embeds in your wash cloth,
and circles the drain catcher like a fur collar.
And when you finally step
out of the tub onto the tile,
the only thing protecting you from yourself
is the veil of steam
and condensation on the mirror.
