Letting my hair down with one simple twist
To waft in the breeze without obscuring my vision;
A novel sensation.
Once it was long and tamed,
Now short and wild.
A wild child steps forward, shakes her head with abandon
And cries: “I am free!”
I haven’t cut my hair in eight years.
Trimmed, certainly, but cut?
I wasn’t bold enough to take that step.
I was warned as a child, “Don’t cut your dolls’ hair, ’cause it won’t grow back!”
Have I been a doll all this time?
Eight years of snarled stress and pain caught in the tangles of brown curls.
I grew it long because fantasy women wear their hair long
In battle-braids while soaked in blood,
Free-flowing in dramatic poses on mountain tops.
I thought it would make me beautiful and strong.
But like Samson I was duped by my own Delilah.
Instead of vitality, it weighed me down with knots of uncombed regrets.
What a strange feeling, the metal scissors shearing away carefully, tightly braided locks,
Twelve inches of split ends, split lives, split hearts.
I might still be weak and un-beautiful.
This style may make me look poofy and silly.
But it doesn’t bother me this time.
My head and heart feel light and new,
Relieved of a burden unnoticed until its absence.
I do not know what sort of thing I have become.
For now I feel buoyant and calm as I run fingers through short, feathery curls.
No brush necessary,
Unfettered, unhinged, unrepentant.
I will see what this new vista holds for me.
