honey & lime

To All My Shitty Bathroom Haircuts

Semi-rusted kitchen scissors

give a gal the gall to

drizzle itchy fragments of femininity into

every crevice of a dingy apartment bathroom.

 

Extracting slivers of dead skin that were once attached to my scalp

so precisely until they’re nestled deep

into the grout between cold, stained linoleum.

 

“It’s not about the destination,”

I say, bringing blade up for bludgeoning,

“it’s about the journey.”

 

The self-defense class I took, not after

the first or second

or even the third time,

told me that statistically

women with long ponytails are just

easier

targets.

 

So, yes, I did look better with longer hair

but it’s easier to reject convention

than to ache in the weight of your own history.

 

My DIY bathroom haircut is my refuge;

it’s a yellow caution traffic sign that

emblazons me with a special kind of ‘A’:

I’ve survived and I’m not happy about it.

I’ve survived and I don’t care and

 

the next time you see the Betty Crocker clippers missing

from their spot in the utensil drawer, or

the misplaced fabric shears that were

just next to the sewing machine think

of me, hacking away at the final frontier

of my body, but this time, at my own hand.

 

Think of me and feel lucky that you can forget.