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Writer's pictureGabrielle Tola

Trenzas

Updated: Jan 14, 2021





you’d sit me on the highest stool

my throne, your salon chair,

as you twirled each section

like the ballerina on my prized jewelry box

tenderly tugging my hair

with each dip of your hand

weaving in and out every strand

with the most patience

only matriarchs like you can possess

I’d hear the symphony

of beads click-clacking into each other

this choreography

was our sacred morning ritual

woman and girl

against the world

aside the white kitchen counter

I’d one day grow to reach

so goddamn tight on my head

I never hated them

until I reached the age of adolescence

the age of assimilation

I’msosorry

for wearing your dior lip stick behind your back

and for practicing to walk in your heels

until I’d tear the skin on my knees

colliding onto the white tile floor

like stars spilling into black holes

and for letting your mother’s pearls

convince me I was already a woman

I apologize for hating the denim you wore

levi’s thicker than my skull

complying to conform

sweet cinnamon american dream

white picket fences and family picnics on grass

as crisp as ice

green as dollar bills

and I apologize for being everything a man would want me to be

those braids made me feel too

ethnic

too surveilled

spectators counting

down the seconds

until I was supple and submissive enough

how foolish of me

to think it was our job to be beautiful for consumption

no,

your head was always placed

firmly on your shoulders

two hands

peeling platanos into two hemispheres

nourishing the land you came from

and the soil from which you and I bloom

you make it look so

easy

I still mostly wear my hair down

but I raise my head to honor you.

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