Washing My Hair
my first chemo treatment--
I dip my hair below the faucet, upside down
and let the water run from nape over
short tresses, waving like kelp between rocks at low tide
chopped short with disregard mere months before
as mere annoyance, to save time for studies.
My mother is crying, tears dripping
into the suds as she kneads the soap into my scalp
as she did when I was young and had been foolhardy
jumping off the stairs and into a cast.
It is just hair. I tell her. It is just hair,
and yet it is so much more.
They are the strands of my life,
days, minutes, seconds
lives that could be, futures that could have been
dying from the roots, coming loose from their beds, unborn
slipping through my fingers
with only the hope that some may
have the opportunity to spring up in their place.
