The Creation, and: Hair, and: I’m Afraid of Emptiness

The Creation

Woman was made so clothes would have somethingto wear. So shoes would find company, hair,

finely braided, hanging down the shoulders of anunloose woman. A tight-fitting skirt, finding knees.

Some lappa suit, carved out of unyielding things.Stiff fingers, sewing and sewing, until fabric

attaches itself to permanent skin. All the lost hoursand lost sleep, just so fabric can find sliding ground

on the back of a woman, feeding herself on scrapsof unwanted love in a city, long lost to map builders.

Woman was made so pavement would have feetto carry. Loads of sharp heels, bare, only to shoes.

So feet would know the forgetfulness that comeswith stepping, the forgetfulness of twisting not just

to the rhythm of new love. Woman was madeso men would have trouble to fall into. Like a ditch,

dug so deep, falling into it only creates deep scarsin an already scarred heart. Woman was made

so worry would have a place to lease, so the sunwould find moon, so moon would have daylight

to blame for its own disappearance, so worrywould burn down the throat of some lonely man.

Woman was made to put the world in places whereplace cannot hold earth. Woman, carved crudely

out of the beauty of ugliness, out of scarred piecesof pain. Beauty, out of all the broken parts of a broken

city, where the heart has forgotten how to mend.Woman was built out of corrugated pieces of zinc,

just so the earth would rebuild, so pain would forgethow to be. Earth, finding erectness in the small,

bent, carved places, where the world has been solong broken, there is no longer any unmaking.

Woman was made to remake other women intoother hard pieces of burnt clay. So the clothing

we wear could talk to other clothing we can’t wear.Woman was made from scarred tissues of metal,

from the firmness of a brick wall, iron piecesstanding up at last for something. So tears

would have a face to wear, so pain would havesomething to carry around, so the earth would

find the heart to heal all the brokenness of ruin.Woman was made to unmake a man the way

you unmake a face the way you undo, to rewindthe corrugated heart of a world, too long broken.

Hair

So your hair has decided to leave you.Be calm, this is a sacred moment.So you’re standing before the mirror,horrified. Loads of long strandshave curled themselves for departurefrom your head.Soon, you will be as bald as a glass wall,as bare as sidewalk, as a clay pot,as jar, as marble, as solid as a globe,your baldness, balder than bald,but you are still a woman.The despair they said you would knowhas also left you.After all, who needs hairif they cannot live life?After all, what is hair to a dead personin a casket? After all,how does the grave reconcile itselfto your long dark hairif not losing hair was a death sentence?So, like the silly child that you are,though grown and aging, a womanafter menopause, who under attackby cancer, refuses to fall,dance. Dance your way into lifeagain, into the beauty of the yearsto come, into the days when yourgrandchildren arrive to greet you,dance with laughter, after all the painof chemo, the pain of your hairfalling at your feet on your bathroom floor,dance and make music come to life. You will live through this.And afterward, you will forgetyou were even woman enoughto wonder about hair.Dance and laugh, and let it fall.Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies,it cannot come to life, you were told.So, dance into the new hairthat awaits you some day.

I’m Afraid of Emptiness

Like yesterday, down the long corridorto the cardiologist’s office,the walls...