Emily Franklin
Out the bathroom window
the trees are speaking
a language I cannot
understand, their conversation
all morning branches scraping skin
to limb the way tonight
my daughter asks me
to dye her hair or rather shows
me the box and gestures—
come in. The first time in months
she allows me to hold her
hair dark and wet like that first
day or more like she is now
born the way she wanted, just
the two of us in the bathroom
laboring and quiet except
for those deep breaths—
her piles of hair heavy as yesterday
and while I know hair is just dead
cells, a mass of DNA and marketing
here it is the tether
between us, between light
and dark dye dripping, between
everything we need to say and cannot
ask so instead we read the box aloud
in accents that aren’t ours—
What are you hoping for? Who
do you want to be? Do you recognize
yourself? What do you desire—
fuller hair? To be sleek, shined,
and glossed? Do you want to be
noticed? To be Softer? Do you want
something that lasts?
photo: Lou Rouse