Tú No Eres Tu Pelo.
My daughter is not her hair, but if she was she would be all the roots assembled under the earth, mustering soil and water to bear fruit for the sun to sit, to have a piece of the world inside the pits of us, making things spin on their axis’ twice fold; she would be both iron and liquid, calcium and courage, sunlight and sulfur. Ojos be like beacons, blinding mad folks. She could fold down the edges and smooth out the creases with the tilt of a hand, the shift of limb.
My daughter is not her hair but if she was some would be cosmo and comet, kismet and cosmic, comic sans and arial, all fonts and fences between the grass and greens and cotton bales and peas under mattress, tostones y yuca, habichules, arroz con collards and fried chicken, Crisco grease pouring out of cartilage. She would be revolution in a teapot, boiling Stokley and Afeni, voodoo vibes high priestess tarot card palm reader woman, the dust of a million marching ancestors tumbling down her cheeks, making sweet Sade love to her vertebrae: back straight stiff like the pleats in my momma’s nursing regalia. Not the mule for saving, for saviors in stained glass seeking shelter in bosom or branding her idioms for sacrifice and sex.
My daughter is not her hair but if she was she would be a Bible or church or a flag burned at half-mast . At best, a waterfall, a firewall, a million meteors, two thousand comets, an #ImWithHer, a #YouOkSis. A coat of arms of sweet stevia, yacón, yams; of lily, of lilac. Of yolk, of yesterday and tomorrow, of past tense and present, of path tens and more.
If the skin somehow loosely hangs off of her torso like some hunched over matador, following age and wrinkle around, fighting off the passage of peril and time, she will still be more than the antennae peaks crowing at the solar happenings of the day. More than 4C or textures, the tandems working their ways past scalp, past shea and cowrie, oils of tea tree, coconut…more than breeder, herder, hoarder of milk and vitality, muscle and bone. Not a storefront, not brick and mortar for theft or taking, the raping and pillaging.
If the hair is too coarse, too hard, too nappy, too much filled with love, with sacrifice, with sacrament, then so be it. Pero tú pelo, mi niña, tú pelo is made of the strains of Brillo, wool, Jesus and Aja and Abrewea and Nike and Athena and Mohammed. The whole and the half, the mold, grass of holding on to the have’s I did not, that tú madre did not, y yet still, you give, you give, you give - give light, give lyric, give song.
You are not your hair but, if you were, it would be of no matter, no concern. Because, you are enough. Always.
