Hairless

Figure Stretching

“Cancer?” They ask with a strained inflection

Of pity, mixed with “Gotta talk about it.”

 

At the pharmacy, one woman assaulted: “Breast cancer?”

Irony apologized, “Only alopecia,”

An odd label for two years

Of despairing the unknown that lurked ahead

 

Trauma, the doc said

Which one, I thought

 

Bodies were scattered about

Thunderbolts resounded

We all felt the earth move like roller skates

Across the pavement

 

Skateboards crashed into cement walls

 

They ask if a tree falls in the forest

And no one is there to listen,

Does it make a sound?

 

We witnessed the crash as we had others before it.

Bird by bird, that’s what Annie Lamott says

 

Hair by hair

Saved by a hair

Doomed by an eyelash

And a vagina pubic threadbare

 

You were there in the driver’s seat

When I pulled the passenger mirror down

To look narcissus in the eye

And the last eyebrow hair fell

October 2007

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