The Bazaz Curse

As a baby I had a cloud of hair

that followed me. 

It wasn’t so much curly

as it was soft and puffy. 

I looked so much like my older brother

everyone thought we were twins. 

Once at the pool someone asked

my mother

why anyone would dress a little boy

in a girls’ bathing suit.  I didn’t know enough

to be mortified and even when

my mother

tried to convince me to let my

hair grow long I wouldn’t budge.  I liked

the way I looked.  But in the third grade

when everyone else was letting their

hair grow long and luscious,

I had my mom give me a haircut,

short in the front, long in the back,

which seemed the easiest cut to manage.  And I

was in serious love with that hair-cut,

until Jessica Daniels told me I looked like

a freak with a mullet. 

Oh.  I hadn’t noticed. 

And that was just it. 

 

“All Bazaz women have bad hair,”

my mother

said, pushing shoving

her own hair flat onto her head.

 

That night I dreamt of silky, smooth

locks I could fold out and lure boys with.

Smooth strands to wrap

slow around my fingers.

Twirling.

Seducing.

But my hair was a puff of awkward,

jumping two-step

out from my scalp.

Frizzed out it’d blow up two times

its size in the summertime.  Still, it was mine.

Middle-Eastern, Irish, and Italian roots

stuck thick out.