I braid my grown daughter’s hair so tight
like a weaver making a basket meant to hold water.
She likes the prickle of the tiny hairs tugging
at her scalp. Needles, that one at a time
would be unbearable, but together
they are a bed she can lie on.
She says it’s cathartic.
Though she doesn’t know what it is
she’s trying to let go of.
What kind of pain is released
with a little hair pulling?
I’d like to know.
I remember my sister returning
from the hospital when we were teenagers.
This sister born in a body she could not command,
unable to speak a single word.
A month tied to a bed, the unholiest of halos
screwed to her skull and weighted down
to protect and align her newly straightened spine.
How each day nurses entered her room
to deliver more pain. Our mother
helpless to console her.
At home she tore at her head,
ravaged herself bald a handful at a time,
strands unearthed, roots and all,
as if a tornado had plowed through a field
of soft wheat. Her despair littering
her wheelchair, her bed.
Strands silently falling to the floor.
One pain in exchange for another.
It was all she could do,
offer up her crowning glory
to the god of unspeakable things.