Phoebe Cragon
FALL
In October, they prescribe vitamins
and tell me to be patient. I nod along
with my mouth closed.
Unbidden, my neck
curves into the memory of my mother
yanking a Denman brush through damp tangles
while I cried on her lap in the pre-dawn dark—
one day you’ll see how blessed you are—
erupts in goosebumps to think of
the strange woman in the fluorescent grocery store
who raked pearl-blue fingernails across my scalp
while she told me I looked like a doll baby,
like the favorite porcelain bride of her childhood
with its sewn-on lace veil—
In the first photo where she holds me,
my grandmother, a smiling 45, hides us both
behind a thick curtain of glossy black ringlets.
I started to feel ragged and wrong
a week after my 21st birthday, months before
I first asked needle and centrifuge for answers.
Back home, in the shower,
scouring out the smell of antiseptic,
I’ll watch slugs of dead brown curls fall
and clog the drain, read my fingers
over a new patch of pale skin, and wonder
if this is how my body cries out for sunlight.